Desiring Italy: Women Writers Celebrate the Passions of a Country and Culture

This book is a treasure chest, a real find! Susan Cahill gives us here a fabulously artistic collection of woman's writings, all of which are centered around Italy and Italian experiences. The result is a resplendent patchwork of thoughts, ideas, articles, recipes, facts, stories... great writings, which explore various aspects of that paradise on earth and its inhabitants that we all know as Italy and the Italians. This book makes a great travel companion, whether you are traveling or not, or a great souvenir, in case you read it only once you are back. I highly recommend it not only for its literary side but because it very astutely portrays the multi-faceted, highly aesthetic "dolce vita" from numerous angles...

This a great book. I read it in a short time. It was like being there. I loved every moment of the book. Of course, I like to cook and I garden The recipes are worth a try. I felt like I was there, part of the book. A great read!

I ordered Desiring Italy to read while my husband and I travelled in Italy this year. I had hoped that it would be as interesting as The Italians by Luigi Barzini or Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes. Unfortunately, I was disappointed by the book; it did not meet my expectations or hold my interest so I abandoned it in our hotel room.

I love Italy and I love this book. It is arranged in regional sections, but that is not entirely relevant because the pieces range over time and subject. For example, in the section on The Veneto there is an excerpt from Marcella Hazan's 'Classic Italian Cookbook' (incidentally, one of the very finest cookbooks - a lovely literary work, and the recipes work too!) - on Italian Cooking: where does it come from? The Italian art of eating, restaurants The bacaro experience, gelati. Simply scrumptious.

The other contributors are the very best of literature: Edith Wharton, Francine Prose, Maty Shelley, Jan Morris, Muriel Spark (one of my favourite evocations and lived experiences: Venice in Fall and Winter), Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Elizabeth von Arnim, Francesca Alexander, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Mary McCarthy, Kate Simon, Iris Origo, Lisa St Aubin de teran, Patricia Hampl, Florence Nightingale, Margaret Fuller, Eleanor Clark, Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Spencer, Rose Macaulay, Shirley Hazzard, Ann Cornelisen, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Mary Taylor Simeti.

Each contribution is preceded by some brief contextual information on the author's piece. It is not 'biographical' in the sense of being a recitation of dates and places and events, more a little about the author's motivations or expressed thoughts about Italy or the subject at hand. After the excerpt is a guide for the traveller - a little more about the places, people or events mentioned in the passage.

This is the sort of book that inspires a lust for travel, or becomes a treasured travel companion. It is one of the most 'lovingly' edited books I have ever read.

Many anthologies contain an imbalance of male to female writers, and more men are travel writers, so this volume is particularly delightful. The editor elaborates on aspects of places that are particularly concerned with the cultural history of women. One of the reasons to produce a book using women writers is expressed by Susan Cahill (editor): " The women writers who love Italy take a different tone from what we hear in the travel notebooks of Dickens, Hawthorne or henry james. The women's narratives come across with a down-to-earth concreteness. They're irreverent, critical and anecdotal but never brittle, mean-spirited or smug at the Italians' expense....No narrator observes safely from a cool, aesthetic all-knowing distance. Rather, their affection for the place and people moves the current of the prose."

I love this book. Maybe you will too.

Why are all 30 of the entries written by women? What's the point of that? Is this some kind of womens studies book, or what's up with that!