My Read: Four Seasons in Rome
My friend, Karen, is acutely aware of my love of all things Italy (it is where we met). She is also a huge reader who knows exactly what I like. When she recommended Anthony Doerr's Four Seasons in Rome I knew it was for me.
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| Me in Rome in front of Bernini's "leaking stone boat" mentioned on pg. 41 |
On the same day that Anthony Doerr’s wife gave birth to newborn twins, Doerr learned he’d won the Rome Prize, a chance to spend a year at the American Academy in Rome, all expenses paid. Four Seasons in Rome describes Doerr’s subsequent year in the eternal city, reading Pliny the Elder, visiting the piazzas, temples and churches of Rome, attending the vigil of a dying Pope John Paul II, trying (and failing) to write the novel that would eventually become All the Light We Cannot See (a-must read), and raising twin babies. “To call this a travel book,” said Kirkus Reviews, “is to sell it short: it is delightful, funny and full of memorable scenes. Don’t leave for Rome without it.”
“(Rome) is a Metropolitan Museum of Art the size of Manhattan,
no roof, no display cases,
and half a million combustion engines
rumbling in the hallways.”
- Anthony Doerr
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