Tag Archives: history

the city of falling angels — john berendt

4 stars

Just like in his book Mid­night in the gar­den of good and evil John Berendt gives us an impres­sion of a city and its pop­u­la­tion. This time he picked Venice.
In 1996 the Fenice, opera house of Venice, is burnt to the ground. Berendt hears of this and sets his sails to Italy. In Venice he speaks with peo­ple who heard and saw the Fenice in flames and he is very intru­iged with their sto­ries. Who set the Fenice on fire and why does it take almost ten years to get the opera house built again?

the crucible — arthur miller

3 stars

A play about the Salem witch-hunt of 1692. We get to see what hap­pens in com­mu­nal hys­te­ria when the daugh­ter of rev­erend Par­ris comes back from danc­ing in the woods very ill. It is said that she and the other girls were met by the devil. After that every­body is accus­ing every­body for hav­ing some­thing to do with the devil and witch­craft, all for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. One for exam­ple is Rebecca Nurse who is a mid­wife and has deliv­ered only dead babies at a fam­ily. Rea­son: she must be in con­tact with the devil.
All the accused have two options: con­fess, be released and return to God or not con­fess, keep your dig­nity and own truth and be hanged.

midnight in the garden of good & evil — john berendt

5 stars

If you are not a big fan of non­fic­tion — like me — don’t be alarmed by the genre descrip­tion. It reads like fic­tion: thriller, drama, wit, you’ll get all and at very high qual­ity at that. You will read like there is no tomor­row. It is a great book!