Product Description

Joan Marble lived in a 16th century Roman Palazzo apartment with husband Robert, a sculptor, for thirty years. A lifetime of integrating with the Romans and gardening on her beloved terrace above the roof tops resulted in this entertaining memoir. Brimming with anecdote, history, and insight, Joan's experience of Rome and Romans is infected by her contagious fascination for plants, a hobby she shared every week with The Women's Gardening Club of Rome. She includes an insider's view of Italian fellow gardening obsessives, a tale of Bicycle Thieves, and an authoritative view of famous Italian Gardens. Tales abound of the expat community, and the illustrious writers and aristocrats with whom the author, as a journalist, kept company. Joan infuses her memoir with an affection for her plants, and scatters tips and personal stories of how to keep her fickle plants alive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #459669 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
The first instalment of Joan Marble's autobiographical account of her family's life in mid-20th century Rome is entitled 'Panem - Bread' and this basic staple makes a perfect metaphor for the simple, laid-back lifestyle she and her family led. From the various terraces in the Italian apartments she lived in with her sculptor husband Robert and their two children Jenny and Henry, Joan enjoyed the kind of intensely personal, yet mildly detached attitude of the expatriate and this informs her simply scripted and light-hearted book. The lyrical prose does not centre on specific stories or adventures, nor does it analyse aspects of Italian culture compared to American or British culture in the manner of travel writers such as Bill Bryson. Instead, it focuses on the sensual - the sound and smells of the Eternal City and her children's reactions to it, the simple routine of waiting for the swifts to return to the city from Africa, walking her infant son to nursery school, tending the potted plants on the terrace, and dealing with bicycle thieves in a city nearly brought to a halt by gridlocked traffic. When portraying her various apartments and the characters whose lives linked inextricably with her own, she gives them a depth and realism that goes beyond mere description, and the black-and-white sketches beautifully illustrate the neighbourhood Marble so adeptly brings to life. A quirky and well-written memoir. (Kirkus UK)

Marble (Notes from an Italian Garden, 2001) casts a sophisticated eye over episodes of her 40-year residence in the heart of old Rome. Experienced from both street level and the terrace of her 16th-century apartment on the Piazza Borghese, her impressions possess a pleasing durability, evidence that ancient Roman social, political, and family arrangements-bureaucratic patronage, a tradition of gregariousness, and a penchant for the sensual-still pertain. You can practically hear the silk rustle in Marble's charming, elegant prose, even when her stories are weightless and fail to stick in any memorable fashion. Little unites these observations other than their author, who goes on about the idiosyncrasies of her maid, her husband's bad luck when it comes to bicycles (they're always being stolen), the seagulls that trouble her equanimity, the spats with neighbors and doormen, the click of a mason's hammer, the return of the swifts. Marble takes umbrage at the tawdriness and ubiquity of Italian television and despairs over the traffic. "The street of Rome, built for walking and small chariots, have been taken over by an army of vehicles," she writes. Perhaps understandably, she often sounds distracted, as if she would rather be thinking about something else. Gardening, for instance: when Marble turns to that topic, though it too tends to be seen in soft focus, she finally displays some passion and a few firm opinions. She appreciates "the trend towards a more personal, less constrained garden style," she gives sharp reports of gardens in Palmero and the Lepanti Mountains, and she has valuable advice when it comes to the art of the terrace garden. Though the author at times gives the impression that she's talking to herself, overall this reads like a series of postcard invocations to Rome: beautiful, intimate, friendly, and welcoming to the gardener. (Kirkus Reviews)

From the Back Cover
Joan Marble has lived in a sixteenth-century Roman palazzo apartment with her husband, Robert, a sculptor, for over forty years. From the vantage point of her beloved terrace above the city rooftops, among the lemon trees, agapanthus, amaryllis, and dahlias, Joan Marble has observed and mingled with the citizens of Rome, and in this warm and witty book she recounts the difficulties and joys of maintaining a garden high above the traffic and noise of the city. Woven amongst the garden lore are her informed views of everyday life in the city: of partying, politics and popes; of bicycle thieves, cat-catchers and gardening ladies.

This delightful and atmospheric account is layered with history and cultural knowledge, and scattered with serious green-fingered tips. Joan's tangible passion for her adopted home is fully revealed here, and will delight armchair gardeners and travellers alike.

About the Author
Joan Marble:
Joan Marble is a member of the Rome Garden Club and the Foreign Journalists' Association in Rome. Born in Boston and educated at Smith College, she wrote her first published article about the Rose Garden at the White House. Her book, Notes from an Italian Garden, told of how she created a garden in the hamlet of Canale just north of Rome. Her most recent book, Notes from a Roman Terrace is also published by Black Swan. She and her husband divide their time between Rome, Canale and London.

Customer Reviews

Notes from a Roman Terrace
I really wanted to hate this book! The first few pages made me want to gag with their very Frances May-esquness and typical expat perfectness, but once I got into the meat of the book it really was very good. I found Ms Marble's treatment of Italian politics readable and accurate and I really enjoyed her insights into the plants that she uses on her terrace. We lived in Rome for 9 years and now live in Umbria and her suggestions are useful here too.

Notes from a Roman Terrace
A thoroughly enjoyable book for people who like true stories. The domestic life along with political views and history made the book unsentimentally charming. I am now going to read Notes from an Italian Garden.

La Dolce Vita Redux
Joan Marble¹s new book "Notes from a Roman Terrace" is a must for every thinking woman's travel bag, whether or not you are bound for Italy. Her wry comments on Italian life and politics, seen from an insider-foreigner¹s point of view, spice up the idea of La Dolce Vita. Far more than a selective memoir of 50 years in Rome, she has the knack of informing while entertaining with wit and charm and a total lack of condescension so rare among writers about host countries. Too good for male consumption? Not in my experience!