![]() ![]() Friends of the American Peggy Guggenheim, who describe to Berendt how she re-enacted the sinking of the Titanic, during which her father died, by walking naked into the Grand Canal along with a full orchestra.Ludivico deLuigi, a renegade artist who is ultimately disappointed when the carabinieri don’t arrest him for defacing a public painting.His reporting put him in contact with a colorful array of personalities, including ![]() As I read, it became clear that the fire was the vehicle Berendt used to insinuate himself into the daily life of Venetians. When I started the story, I wondered how Berendt was going to deliver on the promise written on the flyleaf and become a detective investigating the fire. Berendt use the destruction by fire of the Fenice Opera House in Venice as the hub in the wheel of all these strange and lovely stories about the people who inhabit this most unlikely of cities. His treatment of the off-beat, eccentric elegance that is Savannah made for a good read, but his similar treatment of Venice, Italy makes for a great one. You may remember Berendt as the author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which put Savannah, Georgia on the map for millions of readers. It’s cataloged as fiction, but it reads like a gossipy biography or memoir, and yowsa is it good. The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt is plain and simple the most oddly compelling book I’ve read in ages. ![]()
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