Reviews
Of the thousands of books about Venice, very few tell us what it is like to live there. In these beautifully-written stories we see the city through the eyes of its residents, from countesses to postmen. I was captivated: a transatlantic flight passed in a flash. John Julius Norwich Jane Turner Rylands' Venetian Stories is terrific, guiding us with both affection and a shake of the head through a cast of charactersVenetian workers, middle-class folk, aristocats, even a giddy, disabused foreignerwith almost Dickensian relish. In the process, as lives cross and mingle and as co-incidence becomes fate, we are treated to many beautiful evocations of Venice itself, the various social worlds, the daily rituals, the sights and sounds of that ultimately wondrous and unreal city. A Robert Altman movie of criss-crossing narratives, Venetian Stories is also a collection of fastidious, old-world, Proust-like pratfalls. Henry Bromell
