VENICE-O-METER 10
French-language information dump and collection of flimsy anecdotes masquerading as a novel.
I really wanted to love this book, which was given to me by a dear friend when she visited me in Venice. In all fairness, I think it may be a worthy read for people who are new to the city, by virtue of its many informative passages. Those didactic disquisitions wouldn’t have been so painful if the writing had had just a hint of a personality; these bits always, always start with a fronted clause that’s about as sleek as a guidebook or a Wikipedia entry. “Created in 1545, it is considered the first botanical garden in the word. Though it’s not very large, it…” is a typical example. Elsewhere, the writing is just painfully cheesy — “The theater is a flower that blooms every night” or “Her smile was as beautiful as the waves in the laguna.”
Reading Venice 