Transported to Venice by Cynthia Zarin
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“I so enjoyed listening to Cynthia Zarin read from her upcoming book,Two Cities, in which she shares her longstanding relationships with Rome and Venice. My husband and I returned to Venice this past December to spend New Year's, just before Covid-19 stopped life there (and everywhere) in its tracks. We had not visited since the late ‘80’s, although we loved our time there very much and often wondered how it was that we hadn’t returned sooner. Being New Yorkers, we typically walk miles a day without noticing, and Ms. Zarin mentioned how she loves nothing better in Venice than to walk all day long. She brought back that wonderful feeling of walking in any direction there from breakfast till sunset, learning to welcome getting lost a number of times a day, when, for example, a map didn’t match a four-foot wide Venetian pathway we took, or led to a walled dead end the map showed going through. Ms. Zarin might agree that the discoveries found quite by accident walking this way made for some of the most memorable stories. She described her Venetian experiences so intimately that I was drawn back in memory to revisit moments I similarly cherished. Like breathing in, through the city's crisp, January air, fragrances of fresh bread baking in a pasticceria we walked passed, or spices emanating from open doors of a salumeria. Fewer tourists crowded the ambling, narrow, stone streets and wooden bridges when we were there, but street life bustled so vibrantly I couldn't imagine the overcrowding we heard about from shopkeepers, who complained to us about cruise ships coming and going in summer. As Ms. Zarin read to us about her journey using a water taxi, I recalled that quarter-mile jaunt at the port she spoke of, schlepping our bags down that odd, red runway to our own water taxi five months ago. That ride to a palazzo that friends had rented on the Grand Canal and to which, very last minute, they spontaneously invited us, was late at night, and entering onto that fabled waterway was like floating through the most incredible movie set ever built. Ms. Zarin called the Canal both beautiful and absurd. She’s exactly right. She also wrote that she would have been warmer in the taxi’s cabin, but felt the need to stay outside in bracing wind to see it all. Me too. Thank you, Ms. Zarin, for taking me back. I can’t wait to read Two Cities, and hope we’ll both, and all, return to Italy in person soon. A presto!”Read full review »
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