Why a Booktrail?
1990s – Venice is a city built on water and in this novel the waters take over the city….
Acqua Alta (Brunetti 5)
What you need to know before your trail
Venice braces for the onslaught of “acqua alta”-the rising waters from torrential rain. For a city built on water and surrounded by water, this is clearly going to be a disaster. Water plays a vital role in Venice and there is something very sinister hiding in the dark depths of the city’s veins
Brunetti has his own problems however, beginning with the savage beating of an old friend. When a man’s body is discovered, Brunetti must wade through the chaos to solve one of his deadliest cases.
Water could be the city’s deadliest enemy yet.
Travel Guide
Venice is a city built on water and a city which can at times be overpowered by the mafia. That is the Venice Donna Leon gives us here and shows us the side to Venice we don’;t see – the kickback, the corruption and the lack of care of those in power. The problem of the mafia is also at the forefront of this novel. Sicily comes across as not a place Brunetti or the others are very impressed with. At least in the fictional sense of course.
So the first sense of Venice where the book opens is not going to last long –
“Domestic Tranquility prevailed. Flavia Petrelli, the reigning diva of La Scala, stood in the warm kitchen and chopped onions.”
Venice however is known for its canals and water and no-one transports you to Venice better than Donna Leon.
For she shows you the two sides to Venice and Italy through the eyes of Brunetti himself. He loves his city yet it disappoints him and frustrates him at the same time –
In this installment, the reader gets to experience the flooding phenomenon -more common as sea levels have continued to rise. Those who live and work in the city however just have to cope as best they can – this is a way of life they have to deal with –
How could these people live with this weather that swelled up from the very pavement? He refused to admit it to himself but he was afraid of that water, of what his foot might come in contact with when he walked through it
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Web: donnaleon.net
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