From Publishers Weekly
On a visit to Venice, de Blasi meets a local bank manager who falls in love with her at first sight. After "the stranger" (as she coyly calls him throughout the book) pursues her back to her home in St. Louis, Mo., she agrees to return to Italy and marry him, leaving behind her grown children and her job as chef and partner in a cafe. Although the banker, Fernando, lives in a bunkerlike postwar condominium on the Lido rather than the Venetian palazzo of her dreams, and some of his European ideas about women clash with her American temperament, the relationship works. She survives his criticism of her housekeeping and his displeasure at her insistence on remaining a serious cook (in modern Italy "No one bakes bread or dolci or makes pasta at home," he tells her), and they marry. Then one day Fernando surprises her by announcing that he is quitting his job at the bank where he has worked for 26 years. They leave Venice, he espouses her interest in food and they now direct gastronomic tours of Tuscany and Umbria. De Blasi's breathless descriptions of her improbable love affair can be cloying, but she makes up for these excesses with her enchanting accounts of Venice, especially of the markets at the Rialto. She conjures up vivid images of produce "so sumptuously laid as to be awaiting Caravaggio" and picturesque scenes of the vendors, such as the egg lady who keeps her hens under her table, collects the eggs as soon as they are laid and wraps each one in newspaper, "twisting both ends so that the confection looks like a rustic prize for a child's party." In a final section entitled "Food for a Stranger," de Blasi (Regional Foods of Northern Italy) includes recipes for a few of the dishes with which she charmed the stranger. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Venice is almost synonymous with romance, and in this charming account de Blasi spares no detail in telling us how she fell under its spell. A journalist, restaurant critic, and food consultant, de Blasi left her home, her grown children, and her job as a chef in St. Louis to marry Fernando, a Venetian she barely knew. In defiance of the cynics who think true love in middle age is crazy, her marriage flourished, as these two strangers made a life together. Food comforted the newlyweds when their conflicting cultures almost divided them, and in the end marital harmony reigns. Is this book a romance, a food guide, or an exhortation for us to come to Venice and experience the magic? Ultimately, it is all three, and there is even an appendix that includes recipes for dishes described in the text. Recommended for larger travel, biography, or cooking collections. Olga B. Wise, Compaq Computer Corp., Austin, TXCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
A mature American woman traveling in Italy finds herself delicately but persistently pursued by a mysterious Venetian. Despite her initial reluctance, she eventually succumbs to his determination and agrees to meet him. When he follows her home to St. Louis, she takes him seriously, and she agrees to marry him. Thus chef and writer Marlena de Blasi recounts her fantasy-like romance. Returning to Venice for the marriage, she takes a leap of faith, dissolving her Missouri apartment and business. She carefully notes and lovingly describes all the Venetian neighborhoods and the many islands of the Venetian lagoon that figure in her maturing affair. Along the way she introduces a host of characters, such as the chain-smoking Italian consul who cautions her about marrying an Italian man. The author also reveals something of her first disastrous marriage and her now grown children. A handful of elegant, inspiring recipes for foods that have figured in the text round out the book. Venice-lovers will connect with the passions depicted in this memoir. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description


He saw her across the Piazza San Marco and fell in love from afar. When he sees her again in a Venice café a year later, he knows it is fate. He knows little English; and she, a divorced American chef, speaks only food-based Italian. Marlena thinks she is incapable of intimacy, that her heart has lost its capacity for romantic love. But within months of their first meeting, she has packed up her house in St. Louis to marry Fernando—“the stranger,” as she calls him—and live in that achingly lovely city in which they met.

Vibrant but vaguely baffled by this bold move, Marlena is overwhelmed by the sheer foreignness of her new home, its rituals and customs. But there are delicious moments when Venice opens up its arms to Marlena. She cooks an American feast of Mississippi caviar, cornbread, and fried onions for the locals . . . and takes the tango she learned in the Poughkeepsie middle school gym to a candlelit trattoría near the Rialto Bridge. All the while, she and Fernando, two disparate souls, build an extraordinary life of passion and possibility.

Featuring Marlena’s own incredible recipes, A Thousand Days in Venice is the enchanting true story of a woman who opens her heart—and falls in love with both a man and a city.





From the Back Cover
“An irresistible grown-up love story.”
—USA Today


“AN APPEALING TALE OF A TRUE ROMANCE AND A SECOND CHANCE . . . A Thousand Days in Venice is a little cioppino of a book, a tasty stew with equal parts travel and food and romance, spiced up with goodly amounts of fantasy-come-true.”
—The Seattle Post Intelligencer


“Move over, Bridges of Madison County. Here comes real romance— with recipes, yet. . . . A beautifully written memoir. . . . The ‘happily ever after’ is riveting and the recipes are mouthwatering just to read.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer


About the Author
Marlena de Blasi has been a chef, a journalist, a food and wine consultant, and a restaurant critic. She is the author of two cookbooks, Regional Foods of Northern Italy (a James Beard Foundation Award finalist) and Regional Foods of Southern Italy. She and her husband, Fernando, now direct gastronomic tours through Tuscany and Umbria.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"When Fernando spots Marlena in a Venice cafe, he believes he's found the one. Marlena is less sure. A divorced American chef and food writer traveling in Italy, she thought she was satisfied with her life. Yet within months of meeting Fernando, she has sold her house in St. Louis, quit her job, given away most of her possessions, kissed her two grown children good-bye, and moved to Venice to marry "the stranger," as she calls Fernando. Once there, she finds herself sitting in sugar-scented pasticcerie, strolling through sixteenth-century palazzi, renovating an apartment overlooking the Adriatic, and preparing her wedding in an ancient stone church." "But nothing perfect is ever easy. Fernando speaks no English. The only Italian Marlena speaks is the language of food. He's a buttoned-up pessimist. She's a serene optimist. She wears bright red lipstick and vintage Norma Kamali. He finds her lipstick too bright and the meals she makes too much for him. It's "festival cooking," he says. Fernando likes things simple, and there's nothing simple about Marlena." As this transplanted American learns about the peculiarities of Venetian culture, we are treated to an honest, often comic view of how two people, both set in their ways but also set on being together, build a life. In the end, Marlena shows Fernando how to let go and live well. And he shows her that tenderness really does exist. Filled with the foods and flavors of Italy, A Thousand Days in Venice is the true story of a woman falling in love with both a man and a city.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

On a visit to Venice, de Blasi meets a local bank manager who falls in love with her at first sight. After "the stranger" (as she coyly calls him throughout the book) pursues her back to her home in St. Louis, Mo., she agrees to return to Italy and marry him, leaving behind her grown children and her job as chef and partner in a cafe. Although the banker, Fernando, lives in a bunkerlike postwar condominium on the Lido rather than the Venetian palazzo of her dreams, and some of his European ideas about women clash with her American temperament, the relationship works. She survives his criticism of her housekeeping and his displeasure at her insistence on remaining a serious cook (in modern Italy "No one bakes bread or dolci or makes pasta at home," he tells her), and they marry. Then one day Fernando surprises her by announcing that he is quitting his job at the bank where he has worked for 26 years. They leave Venice, he espouses her interest in food and they now direct gastronomic tours of Tuscany and Umbria. De Blasi's breathless descriptions of her improbable love affair can be cloying, but she makes up for these excesses with her enchanting accounts of Venice, especially of the markets at the Rialto. She conjures up vivid images of produce "so sumptuously laid as to be awaiting Caravaggio" and picturesque scenes of the vendors, such as the egg lady who keeps her hens under her table, collects the eggs as soon as they are laid and wraps each one in newspaper, "twisting both ends so that the confection looks like a rustic prize for a child's party." In a final section entitled "Food for a Stranger," de Blasi (Regional Foods of Northern Italy) includes recipes for a few of the dishes with which she charmed the stranger. (June) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Venice is almost synonymous with romance, and in this charming account de Blasi spares no detail in telling us how she fell under its spell. A journalist, restaurant critic, and food consultant, de Blasi left her home, her grown children, and her job as a chef in St. Louis to marry Fernando, a Venetian she barely knew. In defiance of the cynics who think true love in middle age is crazy, her marriage flourished, as these two strangers made a life together. Food comforted the newlyweds when their conflicting cultures almost divided them, and in the end marital harmony reigns. Is this book a romance, a food guide, or an exhortation for us to come to Venice and experience the magic? Ultimately, it is all three, and there is even an appendix that includes recipes for dishes described in the text. Recommended for larger travel, biography, or cooking collections. Olga B. Wise, Compaq Computer Corp., Austin, TX Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews