I Am A Reader - Sicilian Odyssey

When Jay and I married, almost 13 years ago, we took a tour of Sicily and Southern Italy for our honeymoon. It was my first time to Sicily, the ancestral home of my mother's family. At the time, I knew very little about the island beyond a city of departure for immigrants (Palermo) and a volcano that still erupted (Mt. Etna). I had no idea what the future held for me regarding this land of my genes.  That I would find cousins who would invade my life and my heart. That I would take my mother, not once, but TWICE, to visit.  That I would stay for a week in an apartment on the very street in the town of Cefalù where my grandmother was born.

Cefalù, provincia di Palermo

Via  Bordonaro, Cefalù

Mom on the balcony of the apartment

That I would learn the basics of the Italian language, visit the spectacular Greek ruins, study the fascinating history, delight in the traditional Sicilian recipes, pick olives from Sicilian olive trees in my cousin's olive grove in Ferla...

that I would become in my very soul a daughter of Sicily.

So naturally, I was eager to read the travel memoir, "Sicilian Odyssey" by Francine Prose, when I spotted it in my local library.

The author, with her husband, set out on a month-long trip to Sicily, just after the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  She says they went "partly to discover what this island has learned and can teach us about the triumph of beauty over violence, of life over death."  I found myself captivated by the book.  Prose has a unique writing style that is crisp, clear and at times, painfully honest.  I didn't always want to read her comments about what she saw because it challenged my "romantic, through rose-colored glasses" memories I often carry with me of my visits to Sicily.  She described places and scenes that I have seen myself but she saw things that escaped my eye.  She says she went determined to see the real Sicily and glimpse what may lie beneath the obvious.  At times, what she saw was struggle, hardship, pain.  She saw many contradictions, the beauty of the Madonie Mountains and the blight of towns like Gerci Siculo.  She weaves the history of the island with present day events, often referring to various legends and myths linked with Sicily.  Her pages of the wonderful Roman mosaics at Piazza Armerina gives not just a description of the mosaics themselves but a detailed account of the owner of the house and what was transpiring in history at that time.  The same is true of her description of the ruins in Siracusa, the town of Noto, the ruins of Segesta and Selinunte, the unique town of Erice...all those wonderful locales that I treasure in my memory.  She refers to the end of the feudal system and the Sicilian nobility by writing about the movie, "The Leopard" and how it relates to the real history and decline of the old social order.  She delves into the cuisine, visiting Gangivecchio and the Tornabene family, the architecture, the art.  She has a fantastic description of Caravagggio's painting "The Burial of St. Lucy" that makes me want to make a special trip to see it.  And to embellish it, she tells the story of the painter's life, problems, and the mystery surrounding his death, pulling together tid-bits and details of information making for a captivating story.

Francine Prose is not of Italian descent.  In fact, she says in the book that she would like to be reborn as an Italian in general and a Sicilian "man" in particular.

Prose has written 16 novels.  This is her first travel book.  At times I could sense that she was observing what she saw as an outsider, not a daughter of Sicily.  But in all, I think she does portray a unique portrait of Sicily, one that captures the island's ever changing moods, from exuberance to melancholy.  The book is intense at times, like the island is intense...with its sun, sirocco winds, flavors, emotions, colors, music.  Most of all she presents a picture of Sicily as the embodiment of humanity's will to survive.

This book is my selection for the month of October in the "Italy in Books Reading Challenge" hosted by Book After Book blog.