The Literary Salon – Enchanted April

April 24, 2019117 Comments

Last April I posted about a delightful book, Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnin, and since it is April again, I thought this would be a good selection for this month’s Literary Review. Although this book was written almost a hundred years ago, it’s a favorite of mine for it’s theme of beauty and hope, and how a lovely environment can renew one’s life and perspective. Here’s a link to the blog……Enchanted April. I hope your April has been enchanting too!

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Italian Villa – 2015

The Literary Salon – Travel Books

March 27, 201917 Comments

If you’re not fortunate enough to get away for a vacation this year, what better activity than to curl up with a travel book and listen to the March winds howl, (like a lion the same way they came in). Last year I wandered into the travel section at bookoutlet.com and never left. There are so many wonderful travel books available, it’s difficult to narrow it down to just a few, but here are some of my personal favorites. (Warning: travel memoirs can be equal parts enjoyable and annoying. There can be a fine line between reading about someone’s wonderful experiences in a sunnier place, especially when you are still in the dull dreary dregs of winter, and resenting the hell out them. But remember there can be comfort in staying home too…see The Golden Age of Travel post).

The Pioneer

Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim, was published in 1923, and could be called the first travel memoir of it’s kind. Set in Italy, I profiled it in a blog last year – see link. How could a book with a captivating opening sentence like this, not be good.

“To those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine. Small medieval Italian castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be let furnished for the month of April. Necessary servants remain. Z, Box 1000, The Times.”

The King and Queen

A Year in Provence (1989) by Peter Mayle was the first travel memoir I read, and I found it LOL funny. He went on to write a whole series of memoirs (read) and a few novels (not read), about Provence. He made Provence so famous that at one time he moved to Long Island to get away from all the publicity. He died last year, shortly after his last Provence book was published, My Twenty-Five Years in Provence – Reflections on Then and Now, (read) which is a summary of his life there.

If Peter Mayle is the King, then Frances Mayes, of Under the Tuscan Sun fame, is the Queen, and she made Tuscany a very popular place to visit. It’s been 25 years since her bestselling book, and she has written wrote four or five more travel books, (read) and has a new one coming out this year – See You in the Piazza – New Places to Discover in Italy. (on order) She also wrote a novel, Women in Sunlight, last year, which I found so unreadable that I can not recommend it. I’m still not sure how a novel about four women who travel to Italy can miss, but it did. Travel memoirs are definitely her forte.

My Personal Favorite

Susan Branch is my personal favorite of all the travel writers. For those who think of her as just The Heart of the Home cookbook author, did you know that after she lost her publishing contract with Little and Brown in 2009, she started self-publishing and now has a trilogy of marvelous illustrated journals, with a fourth on the way next year about England, Ireland and Wales. Her first, Martha’s Vineyard, Isle of Dreams, is about her move from CA to Martha’s Vineyard in the 80’s after a divorce, which I enjoyed as that is a part of the world I would love to visit. (Her second is about growing up in the 60’s and 70’s and is not really a travel book, but more a memoir of her youth).

A Fine Romance: Falling in Love with the English Countryside by Susan Branch

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Her third, A Fine Romance, is about her trip to England and is full of photos and watercolor illustrations, of such sites as Beatrix Potter’s farm in the Lake District and the Jane Austen House in Chawton.

I find her monthly newsletters inspiring, and you can check out her books and order them from her website. I wish she would venture into France and Italy.

A Paris Year – Janice MacLeod

All About Paris

One of my favorite books about Paris, is Janice McLeod’s, A Paris Year, which I profiled last year in a blog titled, April in Paris – Part Two. A watercolor artist, her journal is illustrated with her own artwork, and is a quirky and whimsical look at her day to day life in Paris.

A Paris Year – Janice MacLeod

Italy Revisited

Marlena de Blasi has written three memoirs about Italy – A Thousand Days in Venice, A Thousand Days in Tuscany and The Lady in the Palazzo – At Home in Umbria , which was my favorite of the three. Her books are well-written and often poetic, but sometimes irritating with respect to her ex-pat mentality and whining about their failure to fit into a foreign culture. So if you want to read about someone who makes an impulsive decision to buy a run down palazzo and then complains about how long it takes to renovate it, then this book is for you. So much of appreciating a travel memoir is based on finding the essayist appealing, still it’s an interesting if illogical journey.

My Current Read

Elizabeth Bard wrote Lunch in Paris – A Love Story with Recipes, about her move to Paris and subsequent marriage to a Parisian, which was good, even if I wasn’t much interested in the cooking part, (there are recipes at the end of each chapter). But I am really liking her second book, Picnic in Provence – a Memoir with Recipes, about their move to a small village in Provence, with their young son. The writing is honest and real and so well done, that it’s easy to overlook the fact that she has a wee bit of a privileged princess attitude.

My Latest Discovery

My latest discovery is Vivian Swift, another watercolor artist, found while browsing the bookoutlet website. (I feel like I’m regressing to my childhood with all these picture books!) Le Road Trip – A Traveler’s Journal of Love and France – is a self-illustrated memoir of her fun and whimsical jaunt through France on her honeymoon.

Her latest book (2015) entitled, When Wanderers Cease to Roam – A Traveler’s Journal of Staying Put details the pleasures of finding a place to call home (Long Island Sound) after 23 years of wandering – because sometimes there’s nothing nicer than staying home and reading about travel!

As you can see, my tastes run to England, France and Italy. But there’s a whole wide world out there. What is your favorite travel book?

Enchanted April

April 24, 2018April 24, 201922 Comments

Despite being written almost a hundred years ago the book, The Enchanted April, is just as enchanting today. Four very different women, all unknown to each other in dreary post WW1 Britain, answer an ad for an Italian villa. Two are married but taken for granted by their husbands, one is single and beautiful but tired of grabby men, and one is a widow facing a sad lonely old age. They have nothing in common other than they are starved for beauty and love, and for the fresh air and sunshine of the Italian coast.

Italian Villa – 2015

I watched the movie first, before I read the book, which is what I would recommend. The movie is from 1992 and while film quality has improved tremendously since then, it is still a lovely period drama, (and if I’m ever reincarnated I want to come back with straight black bobbed hair).

My Good-reads review:

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I absolutely loved this book, but I had watched the movie first. A timeless tale with a lovely story line and such vivid descriptions of flowers, gardens and beautiful countryside that you almost felt like you were there.
I ordered the book because it is one of those timeless classics you simply have to own. It was a bestseller in it’s day, 1923, and was based on a month long trip the author, Elizabeth von Arnim, made with her husband to the village of Portofino, Italy, which soon became a famous tourist destination because of the success of the book. They stayed at the Castello Brown, (now a museum), which is where the movie was filmed seventy years later.

It’s such a charming story, that it might inspire you to grab three of your girlfriends and go off on your own Italian adventure. Who wouldn’t want to live la dolce vita?

Tuscan Villa – 2015

Of course in the book the villa came complete with all the necessary servants, so hiring a chef to do the cooking would be the sensible thing to do. (You could invite Amal for tea, she’s British and may be in need of a cuppa and a break from the bambinos). Isn’t that part of the attraction of period pieces, there was always someone to prepare the meals, wash the dishes, care for the children…..and look after the garden.

It’s not surprising that there were such lovely descriptions of the flowers and grounds in the book, as the author’s first bestseller was Elizabeth and Her German Garden in 1898. I have not read that one yet, as I plan on reading it outside on the deck whenever it gets warm enough, as inspiration for gardening season. But I did read her book, The Solitary Summer, last summer which I enjoyed also, which concerned her need for solitude and beauty in the countryside with her April, May and June babies. Her first best seller was published anonymously, and the subsequent ones as by the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden. Because these books are old and often out of print they are best ordered online.

Perhaps there is something about being in such a lovely setting that inspires love. In the book their husbands became more appreciative, although no one runs off and has an affair, (it was a more decorous time), well only the single one. I remember reading once in a book on Italy about a medical condition called, Stendhal’s Syndrome, which is an emotional reaction to too much loveliness. A handful of tourists are treated for this every year in Florence, having been overwhelmed by an excess of beauty. Finally a medical condition we can all aspire too! Of course we don’t have to go to Italy to experience beauty in our lives – it is all around us, we just have to pay attention. Is it possible to surround yourself with an excess of loveliness, especially in a world which so often seems full of evil, hate, and ugliness? Perhaps not, but it is an admirable goal to choose to focus on what is lovely in the world, and so much better for your health! Buona giornata!

Quote of the Day: “It is their manners as a whole, their natural ways, bonhomie, the great art of being happy which is here practiced with this added charm, that the good people do not know that it is an art, the most difficult of all.” (Stendhal on Italy)

Song of the Day: April Love by Pat Boone