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SAGA OF SICILIAN VILLA SATISFIES THE SENSES

Review of new non-fiction about a summer spent in Italy by Marlena De Blasi

Date published: 8/3/2008

THIS BOOK is a little treasure. Spanning the 20th century, "That Summer in Sicily: A Love Story" is more a tale of the land and its people than a romantic story.

Author Marlena De Blasi went to the Italian island to fulfill a writing assignment. What she found, by seren-dipity, was a remote mountain villa inhabited by a commune of widows, living under the benevolence of a wealthy patroness, Tosca, whose true life story provides the basis of the book.

Tosca began life as a peasant girl, traded at age 9 by her father to a wealthy landowner in a deal that provided him with a future paramour for the price of a horse. Raised alongside the cossetted daughters of Leo, a count, Tosca received a superior education in literature and languages, as well as in the manners and customs of the upper class. Beautiful and accomplished, she never, however, lost the thread to her simple heritage. The dichotomy of her upbringing had repercussions as she matured, and the evolution of her relationship with Leo had unexpected results.

When the book begins, DeBlasi is mystified yet captivated by the society of women living within the walls of Tosca's villa, offering their skills for the benefit of all who live there. Seasoning the story with colorful details of food and its preparation (DeBlasi has also written several books relating to Italian cooking), she describes the abundance of herbs, vegetables, cheeses, meats and grains grown and harvested in the vast gardens and orchards, pastures and fields of the estate.

Meals are prepared in huge stone kitchens and shared at communal tables. The women work together, eat together, pray, comfort and bury one another, and celebrate one another's lives.

All this is the backdrop to Tosca's telling of the story of her past. She recounts the events of her life to DeBlasi: "I'd like to tell you a story I want to tell it in English. I suppose I'm thinking that if I tell it in a language other than my own I will still feel as though I haven't really told it at all."

And so she talks, steeped in the serenity of one who accepts the life she has lived. That life contained joys and tragedies inherent to a region where class conflicts between the wealthy, the poor and the Mafia were ever-present.

Full of truth and vision, this book makes the reader think about getting back to basics--simple foods, honest relationships, appreciating the beauties of the natural world--things often displaced by our hectic lives.

Beverly Meyer is a copy editor with The Free Lance-Star.

THAT SUMMER IN SICILY: A Love StoryBy Marlena DeBlasi (Ballantine, $24)

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Date published: 8/3/2008