The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt
London: Sceptre, 2005 ISBN 0340840617
Expectations are funny things aren't they? Those that read my reviews will know that Midnight in Sicily is one of my favourite books. So when I saw the blurb on this book - "behind the exquisite facade of the world's most beautiful historic city, scandal, corruption and venality are rampant, and Berendt is a master at seeking them out." - I was excited...I thought perhaps Berendt had done with Venice what Peter Robb had done with Sicily.
Alas, expectations can often be disappointed, and in this case, that's exactly what happened to me. The City of Falling Angels is mere reportage: good reportage, but not the expositions of the inner workings of Venetian society that the blurb hints at.
Berendt arrived in Venice in February 1996 to spend some time in La Serenissima without tourists. He just happens to arrive in the month that the Fenice Opera House burns to the ground. He uses the fire, the investigation and trial, and the eventual rebuilding of the Opera House as the scaffolding of his story.
Unfortunately the story is very.....American. Berendt, even though he is told many times of the subtleties of Italians, and Venetians in particular, writes with little of the sophistication that would be required to get to the bottom of exactly how society works in such a place. And while the story is based in Venice, Berendt writes too often of fellow Americans to really take the reader into the heart of the city, a heart that - despite his access to people and places that most of us could never hope to meet or be - he fails to penetrate.
So, what do we have here? We have chapters dealing with things as diverse as the Save Venice Fund, Ezra Pound, the Curtis family, and occasional vignettes of characters of Venice such as the poet Mario Stefani, and the glass blower Archimede Seguso. Whereas Robb got under the skin of Sicily, and realised that what isn't said is just as important as anything anyone might say, Berendt has a naive (dare I state American) faith in the truthfulness of his interlocutors. I kept waiting for him to understand that what he was showing us was merely the surface of his stories. He seemed continually baffled that he gets different stories from different people about the same things - he fails, in my mind, to understand that these interstices are exactly where the story lies. I say again, there is little subtlety in this book.
Which is not to say that the book is without interest. The internecine feuds between members of the Save Venice Fund, the shenanigans about Olga Rudge's will, with the Rylands' (directors of the Guggenheim Museum) playing a murky role, and the twists and turns of the Curtis family and how they deal with their inheritancce, the Palazzo Barbaro, are interesting and well-written anecdotes.
The narrative of the Fenice is also well-written, if a little workmanlike in the vein of a good story in the Atlantic or New Yorker magazine. In fact, I get the feeling that The City of Falling Angels is specifically written with the sort of people that read those magazines in mind. It's a bit too careful, and, just a bit, unbelievable: despite the protestation at the beginning of the book that nothing is made-up and that all characters exist as real people, the chance encounters Berendt has, and the particular way certain people tell him exactly what he might need to know about the history of a certain building, or the background of a certain person, seems to me to be a little forced.
So, we come back to expectations. If you are expecting something (like I was) like Robb's amazing flight through history and culture, you'll be disappointed. If you are looking for an interesting and slightly exotic read this might be worth your time.
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