New & Current Releases
Archives: A-Z By Title
Archives: A-Z By Author
Advanced Search

All-Time High Scores
Best Of 2006
Best Of 2005
Best Of 2004
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Books In Our Forums

The City Of Falling Angels
by John Berendt

6.5 based on 21 reviews read critic reviews how did we calculate this? based on 35 votes read user comments rate this book

Compare prices at pricegrabber.com

Buy it at powells.com

Buy it at amazon.com

Buy it at amazon.co.uk

• Official Publisher Site

As he did for Savannah in the bestselling "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," John Berendt examines the city of Venice, Italy, and the lives of many of its modern-day residents.

Penguin, 432 pages
09/27/2005
$25.95

ISBN: 1594200580

Nonfiction
Travel

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

USA Today Deirdre Donahue

I cannot stop haunting travel websites in search of cheap fares to Italy. Angels is that good.

Kirkus Reviews

Berendt does great justice to an exalted city that has rightly fascinated the likes of Henry James, Robert Browning and many filmmakers throughout the world. [1 Aug 2005, p.823]

Library Journal Rita Simmons

An intimate portrait of a city that has survived floods, government corruption, decay, rising water levels, invasions, and attempts by international organizations to "save" it--all while remaining a bastion of art and a place of unique beauty. [15 Sep 2005, p.80]

Publishers Weekly

Berendt has delivered an intriguing mosaic of modern life in Venice, which makes for first-rate travel writing, albeit one that lacks a compelling core story to keep one reading into the night. [18 Jul 2005, p.198]

Washington Post Jonathan Yardley

The cast of characters is suitably various and flamboyant, and Berendt's prose... is precise, evocative and witty.

Chicago Tribune James Polk

[Berendt] allows what had once seemed the central fact of his narrative to unfold so gradually, surrounded by so many vivid side issues, that eventually it is reduced to just one more scene in a vast and sweeping tableau. And once more, the author inhabits the story, not as a participant, nor as a detached observer exactly, but rather as one who has placed himself at the center of the action and has let it wash over him like a rising spring tide. [25 Sep 2005]

Los Angeles Times Nicholas Delbanco

For those who have not been there, this book will whet an appetite to go, and those who know the city well will yearn, in reading, to return. [9 Oct 2005]

Boston Globe Thrity Umrigar

It takes an inordinate amount of willpower to read Berendt's funny, insightful, illuminating travelogue and not want to board the next flight to the mysterious, magical city of canals.

Daily Telegraph John Adamson

With his keen eye, laconic prose, and almost father-confessor-like ability to extract self-incriminating admissions from his various interviewees, Berendt is the most urbane and entertaining of guides through Venice's social labyrinth.

The New York Times Janet Maslin

Though [Berendt] lacks a narrative of great urgency, he nonetheless delivers an urbane, beautifully fashioned book with much exotic charm.

The New York Times Book Review Adam Goodheart

Berendt's voice is gentle and tolerant, reveling in human complexities; he has no pretensions of offering anything more than a good story.

The New Yorker

This book is less sensational than its predecessor, and the whodunit at the center, the burning of the opera house La Fenice, is really far less interesting than the smaller machinations and intrigues that Berendt finds along the way.

Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese

Berendt writes... gracefully and with such a sharp eye for the telling, catty detail. [30 Sep 2005, p.97]

The Independent Matthew Hoffman

This idiosyncratic investigation is a worthy addition to the vast literature about Venice, but hardly a significant one.

The Spectator Jonathan Keates

The City of Falling Angels hardly turns Venice into the festering Babylon-on-sea created from Savannah in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Had Berendt arrived 50 years earlier, when the place was less like a theme park with a container port attached, maybe the quality of the sleaze would have been more rewarding.

The Economist

A broad-brush approach can be a good route for a reporter to the bestseller list, but it is difficult not also to feel a bat-squeak of sympathy for his victims. Whether it was his intention or not, Mr Berendt exposes Venice as a self-absorbed and heartless city.

Chicago Sun-Times Carlo Wolff

Absorbed separately, the stories [Berendt] tells can be fascinating. But his failure to bind them together for a discernible purpose keeps Falling Angels from being magical; rather, it's ambitious, readable product placement.

Daily Telegraph Philip Hensher

This sort of book depends on the author's ability to pick out a decent story... some of Berendt's witnesses, alas, quickly reveal themselves as terrible bores; you can't imagine why he didn't drop them and go and look for something better. They sound like the sort of Venetians you end up having to pay to go away and stop bothering you.

The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Lisa Pasold

Berendt's charm as a raconteur suits the narrow Venetian streets, but some of his stories lead straight into a dead-end calle. [8 Oct 2005]

The Onion A.V. Club Keith Phipps

It's questionable to what degree Berendt sought out examples that contributed to the bigger picture, and the sense that his conclusions are predetermined is only enhanced by the precise, novel-like dialogue. But the story of Berendt's Venice tenure is no less compelling for it.

The Guardian Peter Conrad

It's not only the ethics of his procedure that make me uncomfortable; I'm even more bothered by the clunkily implausible aesthetics of his reportage. To pass off his sleuthing research as narrative, he has to coax his informants to mouth paragraphs of dreary exposition disguised as cocktail-party chitchat.

The average user rating for this book is 6.5 (out of 10) based on 35 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Linda W gave it a2:
I toally agree with Ann G. This book was a bore; particularly frustrating mid-book detour introducing a new character with an odd narrative of his life and death that was a total dead end and never satisfactorally resolved.

daniel w gave it a9:
Having just finished "Angels", I am anxious to turn to John Berendt's "Midnight." I was lured to The City of Falling Angels by its title, a brief interview with the author seen on the Today Show, and by a trip last September to Italy(which included Venice). As a former English teacher and lover of the arts, I relished the language and landscape created by Berendt. Those extraordinary encounters with writers and artists, with architecture and historical settings, with the ebb and flow of the Grand Canal and a cast of memorable characters floating in and out continue to haunt this reader. I felt deeply compelled to continue reading as Berendt provided a narrative celebrating a haunting city, a contemporary whodunnit, and a catalyst for my return to the City of Falling Angels.

TheKate M gave it a4:
Kyla R and I are doomed to disagree. Like all other readers that enjoyed "Midnight", I wanted to love this book. Malheuresement, this book was a disappointment (and to qualify this, I have never nor do I ever intend to read the newest fad diet how-to). Perhaps if the author had arranged his work into short stories - the Rat Man of Treviso; the Ezra Pound debacle, etc - I wouldn't have waited for some unification of the Venicians into a story. Ultimately, I would have had a better view of Venice. Alas...

Ann G gave it a2:
No Story at all. Nothing compelled me to want to keep reading. Now I don't ever want to go to Venice with such whiney, self absorbed bores.

Carol D gave it an8:
Berendt creates a Venetian landscape using portraits of Venetians.

Marcelle A gave it a9:
I just was unable to put this book down. John Berendt surely brings Venice haunting presence to his readers. Having visited Venice several times in the past, last time in 1984, I just would like to go back to visit all the treasures I have missed. The new Fenice, the Murano's glass factories, the marvelous palaces. Being a real lover of the Isabelle Gardner Museum in Boston, I was fascinated by the saga of the Curtis family. This sent me back to my copy of Louise Hall Tharp : Mrs. Jack. Well John Berendt surely owes a debt to that book!!!??? so many of the tales told by members of the Curtis family could have been lifted from Mrs. Jack or from the book's copious notes. This is my reason for giving only a 9 to John Berendt who should have acknowledged his sources.

Nancy C. gave it a4:
I loved "Midnight," and wanted to love this book, but was sadly disappointed. While the book is well-researched and Berendt's prose is always smooth and sometimes beautiful, Venetians' own words seem to have been put through a prose mill, and the characters lose their voices. In this book, passion and personality do not translate from Italian to English.

Read more user comments...

Discuss this book in our forums