La Dolce Vita!

Contemporary tales of life, love, scenery and food in Italy

Summer in Tuscany by Elizabeth Adler
Gemma, an overworked ER doctor, her mother, Nonna, a typical Italian widow who spends her week cooking the Sunday supper and daughter Livvie, a punked-up but well-adjusted teen, are living normal, unexciting lives in New York City until Nonna receives a letter informing her of an inheritance in her childhood village of Bella Piacere. The letter launches the family into situations both delicious and funny in a novel in which romance is detailed as vividly as the landscape of Tuscany.

The Food of Love by Anthony Capella
This modern version of the Cyrano story is a lighthearted novel set in the Eternal City. Enchanted by Rome’s rich culture but not by being hit on by every male she meets, first-time American visitor Laura tells an Italian friend that she's through with horny, clumsy Italian men, and that what she needs is a cook: "That's the thing about chefs. They know how to use their hands.” Soon though, Laura unexpectedly finds herself falling for the handsome Tomasso, who woos her with magnificent meals but hides the fact that his roommate – the shy, enamored Bruno – is actually the chef.

A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena De Blasi (Biography)
Venice is synonymous with romance and de Blasi spares no detail in telling us how she fell under its spell. A journalist, restaurant critic and food consultant, she left her home, her grown children and her job in St. Louis to marry Fernando, a Venetian she barely knew. Food comforted the newlyweds when their conflicting cultures almost divided them, but 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, this autobiography is all three, and there is even an appendix that includes recipes for dishes described in the text.

The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran (945 Doran)
Readers of Doran's amusing memoir about relocating from L.A. to the tiny Tuscan town of Cambione must first suspend their disbelief that any person would actively resist such an opportunity. But resist Doran does – and when his sculptor wife buys a ramshackle, 300-year-old house on a whim, she must drag him kicking and screaming out of his high-stress life as a Hollywood writer and producer. Doran's brutally funny accounts of tangles with everyone (including the mayor, the police, an inefficient landlord and Doran's long-suffering wife) are enough to keep readers hooked until the last page. It may not be a surprise that he lives happily ever after, but how he gets there is certainly worth the ride.

The Last Promise by Richard Paul Evans
Eliana has been living in Italy for several years. She's a talented artist in her 30s who came to Italy to study art and married Maurizio Fernini, the head of a large family agricultural enterprise. What seemed like a fairy tale quickly soured as Maurizio began spending much of his time traveling and philandering, leaving her to care for their severely asthmatic son, Alessio. Then she meets Ross Story, an art lover and tour guide who knows everything about everything in the Uffizi Gallery. Eliana asks Ross to sit for a portrait, and as the two fall for each other, she faces a tormenting choice between romantic love and her love for her son. Evans paces his story skillfully and plays up the Tuscan landscape to maximum effect.

Playing for Pizza by John Grisham
Quarterback Rick Dockery becomes the greatest goat ever by throwing three interceptions in the closing minutes of the AFC championship game. Fleeing vengeful fans, he finds refuge in the Italian National Football League as quarterback for the inept Parma Panthers. The result is a charming fish-out-of-water story. While Rick is at first baffled and then enchanted by all things Italian – tiny cars, opera and benign corruption – in this novel, Grisham instructs his readership in the art of gracious living, featuring sumptuous four-hour, umpteen-course meals.

The Italian Lover by Robert Hellenga
In the fall of 1990, book restorer and longtime American ex-pat Margot is 53, living in her adopted Florence and awaiting the arrival of a film producer who wants to adapt her 1975 memoir for film. At the same time, Margot meets and falls in love with Alan Woody Woodhull, an Illinois-bred guitarist who gigs at the Bebop Club and also teaches literature at the American Academy. Elegant in its colorful use of Italian phrases, cuisine and sites, Hellenga's complex novel offers a vivid, often sophisticated view of modern Florence.

Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy by Frances Mayes (945 May)
Mayes returns to her beloved villa in the small hill town of Cortona, Italy. As she rediscovers her taste for la dolce vita, she embarks on a journey of cultural awakening and embraces a newfound romance with the Italian language and people. "I came to Italy expecting adventure," says Mayes. "What I never anticipated is the absolute sweet joy of everyday life." Capturing the details that enrich the commonplace, here the author appears less like a visitor and more like someone discovering in Tuscany a real home and a real life.

Breathing Room by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
With her personal and professional life in shambles, self-help guru Dr. Isabel Favor escapes to Tuscany to rest, write and rethink her future. But her hopes of a peaceful idyll are dashed when the locals try to convince her to leave her rented farmhouse. The owner turns out to be Lorenzo Gage, a film star and the man with whom Isabel had an impulsive, one-night stand on her first evening in Florence. Chaos reigns and so does passion in this funny yet surprisingly insightful contemporary romance, which gives its optimistic heroine and conflicted movie-idol hero a little "breathing room" and lets Italy's hill country work its magic.

Hill Towns: A Novel by Anne Rivers Siddons
This story follows Cat and her husband Joe on their journey of midlife discovery in which they flirt with the possibility of affairs, bicker, challenge assumptions, make new friends, drink too much, eat fabulous food and tour Rome, Florence and Venice. It's like being there. Siddons lets you inhabit Cat's mind and experience her struggles to overcome agoraphobia, her uncertainties about Joe and, most of all, her neophyte-traveler's view of Italy. The novel is an exploration of a mature relationship and at the same time an effective travelogue.

My House in Umbria by William Trevor
Mrs. Emily Delahunty is an older British lady "with a past," now living in a beautiful, if somewhat broken-down, home in Umbria. Her old friend Quinty runs the house for her as an inn and she writes a series of romance novels. During a day trip, there is a terrible explosion and the passengers in her train compartment are either killed or left wounded and one little girl is orphaned. Mrs. Delahunty offers her house to the other survivors while they recover and while the police conduct their investigation. Full of beautiful descriptions of the Italian setting, this novel is also full of complex characterizations, dark secrets, pain and tragedy.