Torontoist Reads About Venice

By Alison

Torontoist has a shameful confession to make. We have been known to, on rare occasion, read a book primarily because the movie based upon that book features someone kind of adorable. Shallow as this impetus is, it has led to some wonderful reading (how else would we have discovered the wonders of Edith Wharton, if not for our high school crush on Daniel Day-Lewis?), including John Berendt’s excellent Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (adorable as John Cusack is, I’d skip the movie – it’s long, hard to follow, and has too many moody graveyard scenes. Nice Johnny Mercer soundtrack, though). Berendt has finally followed up his 1994 bestseller with the equally difficult to classify (travel? True crime? Literary non-fiction?), and just as good, City of Falling Angels.
Upon publication of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt moved to Venice. By sheer coincedence, he happened to arrive three days after Venice’s prized opera house, La Fenice, burned to the ground, a monumentally shattering event for all Venetians, and lovers of Venice the world over. Horrible as this event was, it was a stroke of narrative luck for Berendt, who wasted no time in insinuating himself into Venetian society, befriending all sorts of colourful local characters (including the creator of the world’s most successful rat poison). Everyone in Venice has an opinion about the fire, and Berendt pieces their stories together, from initial sparks to bureaucratic aftermath. Berendt’s prose is immediate and engaging, and his knack for spicing up an already compelling narrative with fascinating tangents and anecdotes shines through, as does his uncanny ability to capture the personality of a place in a lovingly multifaceted way (he is clearly enamored with Venice’s beauty, but also endlessly amused by its absurdities). As he did for Savannah, Georgia in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, he does now for Venice – his books are irresistible for their ability to make their readers feel let in on an exciting secret.