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A review by bookrecsplease
Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World by Anthony Doerr
3.0
If you’re wondering if you might want to read this book, this is the structure, repeated over and over in different orders.
- Tiny anecdote showing wonder at how Italy is so different from the USA
- 15 second story showing overwhelm or loneliness at how Italy is so different from the USA
- History of a Roman building
- Description of a 30 second experience with his infants
- Anxious intrusive thoughts
- Detailed description of beautiful landscape
- Tidbit he learned from a book he was reading at the time
- Tragic world event described to pin down the date of when his life events are happening
- Tragic local event
I found it so incredibly choppy because each story spans maybe a few minutes and then we’re on to one of the other topics. It’s almost like a bullet point list of experiences and thoughts that are each so brief and generally in chronological order but there’s no direction or momentum to them.
This book is basically a compilation of thoughts and vignettes of mini experiences of a typical American trying to make their way in a foreign European country for the first time, surprised and lonely in turn. On the other side of the coin is, once again, loosely strung together thoughts and very short experiences of raising difficult newborn twins as a very anxious parent. It is very viscerally real for anyone that has ever had to be up feeding a baby every three hours and existed in a state of constant sleeplessness for an extended period of time.
Since it’s his memoir of that time, there’s not a strong direction for the plot beyond the passing of time, and so it’s hard to feel much purpose in a lot of the stories. The chosen anecdotes at times seem random or unimportant to me. And if you’ve ever lived in a beautiful foreign country for a while, you’ll have already been through basically identical experiences that he describes — they’re not particularly unique or insightful.
I think this book would be an amazing family treasure to document that time in their family’s history, but for a random person reading this, it may not mean much.
- Tiny anecdote showing wonder at how Italy is so different from the USA
- 15 second story showing overwhelm or loneliness at how Italy is so different from the USA
- History of a Roman building
- Description of a 30 second experience with his infants
- Anxious intrusive thoughts
- Detailed description of beautiful landscape
- Tidbit he learned from a book he was reading at the time
- Tragic world event described to pin down the date of when his life events are happening
- Tragic local event
I found it so incredibly choppy because each story spans maybe a few minutes and then we’re on to one of the other topics. It’s almost like a bullet point list of experiences and thoughts that are each so brief and generally in chronological order but there’s no direction or momentum to them.
This book is basically a compilation of thoughts and vignettes of mini experiences of a typical American trying to make their way in a foreign European country for the first time, surprised and lonely in turn. On the other side of the coin is, once again, loosely strung together thoughts and very short experiences of raising difficult newborn twins as a very anxious parent. It is very viscerally real for anyone that has ever had to be up feeding a baby every three hours and existed in a state of constant sleeplessness for an extended period of time.
Since it’s his memoir of that time, there’s not a strong direction for the plot beyond the passing of time, and so it’s hard to feel much purpose in a lot of the stories. The chosen anecdotes at times seem random or unimportant to me. And if you’ve ever lived in a beautiful foreign country for a while, you’ll have already been through basically identical experiences that he describes — they’re not particularly unique or insightful.
I think this book would be an amazing family treasure to document that time in their family’s history, but for a random person reading this, it may not mean much.