Short description
Isabella Dusi, a native Australian, settled in Montalcino, a beautiful mountain eyrie famous for its wine and the proud nature of its inhabitants. Her acceptance into this close-knit community was a hard-won thing and has inspired Isabella to capture the true spirit of Montalcino. "Vanilla Beans & Brodo" tells of the violent history of this medieval village, which has lefts its mark on the character traits of the Montalcinese, and also offers a rare insight into the anxiety, joy, fun, and pressure of daily life as it unfolds with the seasons. An evocative story of the rivalry between village neighborhoods, of football fever and festival pageantry, Isabella Dusi destroys the myth that Tuscan villages are tranquil places, and instead reveals a life infinitely rich and full of dramas.
Long description
Foreign writers living in Italy frequently treat the local people as an exotic species to provide amusing stories for their readers. Sipping cappuccino and supping pasta, rarely do they perceive what is going on around them, nor understand the complexity of life for today's Italians. Isabella Dusi came from Australia to settle in Montalcino, a Tuscan mountain eyrie famous for its wine. Her acceptance into this close-knit community was a hard-won thing. This text is her account of life there, offering a rare insight into the anxiety, joy, fun and pressure of inhabiting this medieval village. It also tells of the village's bloody history which has left its mark on the character traits of the Montalcinese. In this evocative story of the rivalry between village neighbourhoods, of football fever and festival pageantry, Isabella Dusi destroys the myth that Tuscan villages are tranquil places and instead reveals a life infinitely rich and full of dramas. This moving and often humorous journey changes the cliched image of Tuscany and brings real understanding of the fierce passion of today's Tuscans for their ancient village, their fertile land and their life in Montalcino.
Review
Packing in your old life and going to live in a Tuscan hilltop village is a cliched dream. Isabella Dusi was drawn to the Tuscan lifestyle from Australia, along with Luigi, an Australian of Italian extraction who tempted her with marriage and adventure. This is Dusi's account of becoming integrated into the local community and penetrating beneath the familiar surface of Italian life. This is in some ways a surprising book, not for what the author 'discovers' (there is nothing here that will come as a revelation to anyone with the vaguest knowledge of Italy) - but because it succeeds in spite of itself. On the basis of this, her first book, Isabella Dusi is not destined to become a great travel writer. Indeed, the book is littered with cliches and bland phrases ('my curiosity led along a slowly unwinding path to comprehension', 'a sweet Madonna of benign simplicity smiling into eternal silence'). But she manages to imbue the reader with a strange longing for Italy, and for the possibility of no longer being the wide-eyed visitor impressed by the obvious manifestations of 'Italian life'. It is in part her sheer honesty, never pretending to be anything she is not, that carries one along. She has an openness and a certain racy pace, a lack of pretension in her approach that one could stereotype as typically Australian but which comes as a relief in this sort of 'travel' writing. And so her experiences of the archery competition, the grape harvest, renting a flat, shopping and so on are keenly felt. This is not a book for the expert on Italy, for the highbrow or the literati. But it amounts more to the sum of its parts. Here is an 'I came here out of curiosity - and I stayed to live' account, without pretension. (Kirkus UK)