A Valley in Italy: Confessions of a House Addict

by Lisa St. Aubin de Teran (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1994

  $3.17

  Of all the romantic obsessions in Lisa St Aubin de Teran's life, the search for a castle occupied her longest. From London to Venezuela, from Norfolk to Italy, she hauled her numerous bags from one train, and one temporary home to the next - dreaming of the house which might one day end her travelling. The moment she saw the Villa Orsola deep in the Umbrian hills, she knew she had found it. Only later did she and her husband, painter Robbie Duff-Scott, discover that they were the owners of a vast ruin. Window-panes and parts of the roof were missing. At night, bats swooped in and out of the empty frames. Months of labour by Imolo and his team of workmen began to restore the crumbling grandeur of the villa and - more urgently - render it habitable. Initially wary of their exotic neighbours, the villagers drew them into the gossip and card-playing at Regina's Bar, the complex rituals of baking and bottling, the festas. With six-year-old Alexander the village pet, Robbie the maestro , and Iseult, Lisa's daughter, attracting a stream of teenage admirers, it only remained for the Irish beauties - the two au pairs - to make the Villa Orsola the most desirable destination in the area. This account of an eccentric family is also a rare portrait of the life of an Italian village; a place where history and change connect young and old and the rhythms of the land shape experience.

• Used

  Paperback
  1995

  $3.31

  Tracing a year in the life of an Umbrian village, this book shifts month by month through the seasons and the social rites of people. Side by side with the celebrations of particular saints' days, the accompanying banquets, the dances, processions and the cultivation of the land upon which the area has long depended, the author describes the restoration of the huge, dilapidated palazzo she and her family occupy. Between the purchase of the villa and her daughters's wedding party a year later, there is an account of life in Umbria as it is lived by the Italians. This proceeds from the last weeks of February and March when the vines are pruned, through the sowing of the tobacco plants, capsicum peppers, sunflowers and corn and their harvest in October. Then there is the gathering of the olives and chestnuts which takes place before the winter feasts set in, followed by the bitter but beautiful winter, when so many villagers are unemployed until the farming begins again.