Isabella Dusi

A decade ago, Isobel and Lou moved to the village of Montalcino and became Isabella and Luigi. Their immersion is now complete in the busy life of this town, and their acceptance by the people means that they are part of the fabric now. In this second book Isabella writes about the events that take place over the course of a year,

She writes about the inter village archery competition, and tensions are high as Montalcino has not won for a number of years now. The local church has been condemned as it has no foundations, but has sat unmoved for 1000 years. Luigi is a big supporter of the local football team and the passion that the supporters have is undaunted regardless of the successes and failures of the team. Even travelling to the matches is an event. A substantial amount of the book is taken up by unravelling the origins of Brunello di Montalcino, a wine that the fortunes of many of the Montalcinesi depend upon.

The centre of the village is the cafe, and almost every day starts with an espresso, before her travels take her across the local landscape; bringing us encounters with monks whose order has been around for 1200 years or so, the hunt for the elusive mushrooms. The food there is magnificent, the richness of the dinners served and consumed, the abundance of the olives and tomatoes are conveyed with mouth watering descriptions.

I had really enjoyed her first book, set in this beautiful part of Tuscany, when I read it over a decade ago, so I was looking forward to this. Dusi manages to convey the beauty of the landscape, the smells of the food, the atmosphere of the event and passion of the Italian people as she walks and travels around the village. Generally it is a good book, but I felt that it was too long and drawn out and didn’t have the clarity and sharpness of the first. The search for the origin of the wine was long and drawn out too. That said, the picture she paints of the stunning landscape, the evocative food and the way of life there is just fantastic. Worth reading for lover of anything Italian.… (lisätietoja)

Good food. Beautiful scenery. Dreadful writing. That’s Vanilla Beans and Brodo: Real Life in the Hills of Tuscany in a nutshell. In this book, Isabella Dusi, an Australian expat, takes us through a year in Montalcino, the Tuscan town where, at the time of writing, she had lived with her husband for five years.

By writing not about her first years in Tuscany, but about her fifth year, it seems that Dusi was trying to set her book apart from the usual fish-out-of-water expat tales that are so popular. I appreciate that, but in reading this book, I realized that those stories are popular because they are entertaining. The few stories in this book that did entertain me were ones where Dusi wrote about her own cultural awkwardness. But even those stories weren’t well executed.

The main problem is the writing. Dusi’s writing is technically correct, most of the time, but it never rises above being merely perfunctory. There’s little to no sense of passion in her words. Her primary method of expressing passion was to use an exclamation point, whether or not the sentence itself seemed to convey excitement! (!) Her diction is also frequently awkward, almost as if English weren’t her native language. When I encountered passages like, “My eyes and mouth are open to the maximum as Luigi rushes on,” I couldn’t tell if she was trying to use unusual language (instead of , say, “my mouth hangs open, and my eyes are wide”), or if she really doesn’t know how awkward her words sound. I suppose five years of immersion in Italian could affect her English, but in that case, where was her editor?

Many of the positve reviews I've seen seem to come from people who have been to Montalcino, and I can see how reading about a place you’ve been to and loved would be a nice way to relive a good vacation. But if you’re not predisposed to love all things Montalcinese, find yourself another way to experience Tuscany. I can’t recommend this one.

See my complete review at my blog.… (lisätietoja)