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Description
Biography & Autobiography. Travel. Nonfiction. HTML:From the author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning #1 New York Times bestseller All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land, a "dazzling" (Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran) memoir about art and adventures in Rome. Anthony Doerr has received many awardsâ??from the New York Public Library, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Library Association. Then came the Rome Prize, one of the most prestigious awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and with it a stipend and a writing studio in Rome for a year. Doerr learned of the award the day he and his wife returned from the hospital with newborn twins. Exquisitely observed, Four Seasons in Rome describes Doerr's varied adventures in one of the most enchanting cities in the world. He reads Pliny, Dante, and Keatsâ??the chroniclers of Rome who came before himâ??and visits the piazzas, temples, and ancient cisterns they describe. He attends the vigil of a dying Pope John Paul II and takes his twins to the Pantheon in December to wait for snow to fall through the oculus. He and his family are embraced by the butchers, grocers, and bakers of the neighborhood, whose clamor of stories and idiosyncratic child-rearing advice is as compelling as the city itself. This intimate and revelatory book is a celebration of Rome, a wondrous look at new parenthood, and a fascinating story of a writer's craftâ??the process by which he transforms what he sees and experiences int… (more)
User reviews
Literary and lyrical except for a few episodes of parenting panic and moments when he wonders “what was I thinking when I accepted the Rome Prize with newborn twins?”, this book about reading, writing, and the terrifying and wonderful experience of being a new parent and living for a year in the heart of Rome when you don’t speak much Italian will appeal to readers of literary memoirs.
if you keep a journal
if you get a fancy prize that lets you live somewhere interesting
if you (and spouse-wife) just had twins
if you just wrote a great book
then you can publish anything
(fun to read, easy to read, life in Rome-speaking no Italian and changing 2000 diapers)
Doerr worked on the
Thanks to my friend Karan for introducing me to and gifting this book! (less)
> A journal entry is for its writer;
An easy joke, but I still laughed:
> It's not until I'm back on via Carini, halfway home, that I realize I was hollering for grapefruit sauce. Grapefruit sauce with basil.
Anthony Doerr's writing transported me to
I was in Rome many, many years ago. I was a child at the time and I know I never appreciated it then. Reading Doerr's book makes me want to go back now and revisit it.
This is Doerr’s memoir of a year he spent as a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The award came with a studio in which to write, an apartment, and a stipend. And, of course, the experience of a year
I was completely delighted by this memoir. I have no children, but have witnessed the absolute exhaustion brought on in new parents by days (weeks? Months?) without adequate sleep as they try to care for a newborn. Caring for two simultaneously? And yet …
Doerr and his wife managed to find some time for themselves (thanks to a great babysitter), to explore some of Rome’s less-well-known treasures and even to venture in the Umbrian countryside for some “alone time.” He recounts his efforts to write, his explorations of the city and surrounding area, his neighbors, his struggles to learn and speak serviceable Italian (asking for “grapefruit sauce” was a highlight!), and the experience of all new parents as these small bundles slowly become independently mobile and show signs of the individuals they will become.