On her second visit to Venice, Weideger (Travel with Your Pet) was so enthralled by the fabled city that she decided she had to live there. She convinced her reluctant partner, Henry, an Englishman with whom she made her home in London, to spend a year in an apartment in the rundown 17th-century Palazzo Donà dalle Rose. Much of her overlong, workmanlike memoir concerns this apartment and her difficulties with the owners of the palace, descendants of the family of the doge who built it; the travails of getting her computer hooked up to the Internet; her problems with the language; and the frustrations of finding her way around Venice. She gets the upper hand with her landlords, who are no match for a tenant who grew up in New York City; meets important people, including some connected with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection; writes unflattering descriptions of most of her new acquaintances; visits museums and churches; and records her impressions of a few art works. The book is most interesting when Weideger turns the mirror away from her personal travails: she offers nice observations on the Jewish community and its cemetery, the history and construction of gondolas, and the city's long-standing battle with the sea and the pros and cons of the controversial MOSE, a proposed flood control barrier. Weideger's book lacks the charm and humor of expatriate memoirs like Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence, but it appeals as a personal glimpse of one of Italy's most unusual cities. (June)
