Arriving in Venice three days after the fire, Berendt becomes a kind of detective-inquiring into the nature of life in this remarkable museum-city-while gradually revealing the truth about the fire. The loss of the Fenice, where five of Verdi's operas premiered, is a catastrophe for Venetians. The City of Falling Angels opens on the evening of January 29, 1996, when a dramatic fire destroys the historic Fenice opera house. Its architectural treasures crumble-foundations shift, marble ornaments fall-even as efforts to preserve them are underway. Venice, a city steeped in a thousand years of history, art and architecture, teeters in precarious balance between endurance and decay.
Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city has become a modern classic.The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil returns after more than a decade to give us an intimate look at the "magic, mystery, and decadence" of the city of Venice and its inhabitants. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else.
It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well bred society ladies of the Married Woman’s Card Club the turbulent young redneck gigolo the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah the aging and profane Southern belle who is the ‘soul of pampered self absorption’ the uproariously funny black drag queen the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer the sweet talking, piano playing con artist young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.
John Berendt’s sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Was it murder or self defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss hung oaks and shaded squares. Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981.
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