VENICE-O-METER 5
Novel partly set in at the Venice Biennale
What fun it was, going everywhere by boat – even though the boat turned out to be as crowded as a rush-hour Tube in London. The difference was that this Tube was chugging down the Grand Canal, through the miracle of Venice at dusk! Venice in the grip of an insane heatwave! Venice the city that never disappointed and never surprised, the place that was exactly like it was meant to be (just hotter), exactly synonymous with every tourist’s first impression of it. There was no real Venice: the real Venice was – and had always been – the Venice of postcards, photographs and films. Hardly a novel observation, that. It was what everyone always said, including Mary McCarthy. Except she’d taken it a stage further and said that the thing about Venice was that it was impossible to say anything about Venice that had not been said before, ‘including this statement. Still, there was always the shock that such a place did actually exist, not just in books and pictures, but in real life, with all the accoutrements of Venice-ness crammed together: canals, palazzos, gondoliers, vaporetti and every-thing. A city built on water. What an impractical but wonderful idea.
You can find some the places mentioned in the novel on the Reading Venice map.
Reading Venice 