Do You like book A Venetian Affair: A True Tale Of Forbidden Love In The 18th Century (2005)?
I was bored to tears by this one. It’s the nonfiction account of a love affair that took place in the 18th century in Venice. The author wrote the book after his father found a collection of letters between their ancestor, a Venetian nobleman, and a young woman. It started out strong and quickly pulled me in, but soon the story was bogged down with a nonstop back and forth. The melodrama between the lovers, the restraints of their society and their different social classes made the whole thing impossible. I felt like the book could have been much shorter, but the author wanted to include every scrap of correspondence he had between the two. BOTTOM LINE: The story is interesting because it’s nonfiction, but it should have been much shorter. What should be a fast-paced love story quickly became a tedious tug-of-war.
—Melissa
Mr. Di Robilant’s father was extremely taken with the nobility that lay in his family line and in the love affair that enraptured one particular Venetian nobleman. In a world engaged in war, Andrea Memmo has his career to make and Giustiniana Wynne needs to find a husband. Because of her background, he is not free to marry her but that doesn’t prevent them from a love affair that would last the rest of their lives. Even separated from him, she could not keep from exchanging letters and those letters make for a breathtaking story of love and loss. This is no historical-fiction romance but an epistolary tale, carefully built around exchanged letters, that wittily details the love of Venice and the passion of a Venetian noble for an English girl of dubious ancestry. This novel draws you in from beginning to end as Giustiniana matures from a fresh-faced, lively girl to a woman of maturity, who must come to terms with her devious lover and a shifting political and social climate. Mr. Di Robilant traces the history of their doomed love affair and the magnificent city that inspired it. In doing so, he brings La Serenessima and many other cities to life, as well as the turbulent, changing times and societies that attended the 18th century.
—Marsha
I think Venice is the most romantic city in the world. So, when I heard this book documented a true, Romeo-and-Juliet-style affair that took place in Venice in the mid-1700's, I knew I had to read it. In some ways, the tale of how the author discovered the story was just as interesting as the tale of the young lovers. After his father found and translated moldy old love letters in the attic of the family palazzo in Venice, the author pulled them together into a full picture of life there at a time of great change, the final years of the Venetian Republic. The narrative dragged in the beginning, when the multiple letters of the young lovers get repetitive and mostly involve complicated plans to be sure to look at one another across the crowded casino without the girl's mother noticing. There are definite echoes of Pride and Prejudice here, as the mother of the young lady is clearly focused on finding the most advantageous marriage possible for her first-born daugher. For modern women, this part of the story is depressing and one aches to think that for centuries this was the highest pinnacle to which women could aspire. The young man is from one of the most important families in Venice, and becomes a successful politician. The book's canvas expands to include Paris and London, and the author does a good job of weaving in just enough historical facts to keep the narrative grounded but is smart enough to keep the focus on his main characters, and the city in which they spent their formative years.
—Julie