Monday, February 14, 2011
Rome
Why do you think Rachman set the story in Rome when it's so easy to imagine this basic story unfolding in any number of locales across America? Do you think it's simply because the author himself was a foreign correspondent, or did you perceive an additional reason for the international setting?
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4 comments:
I think the story being in Rome added more layers to each character. Each character had to have reasons for being in Rome and a background for how they got there. Also, it was interesting to see whether each character was thriving there, whether they thought of it as home, and whether they wanted to stay or move back home or move on to another place.
If the story had been in the U.S., some of this could still be there, but not all of it.
Well, I don't blame the author for using a choice job in a choice location for the basis of a book. It would have lost some ambience in Cleveland! I thought the setting was descriptive. I could picture intimate talks at the cafes and almost smell the delicious food.
I think Rome worked on a few levels. For Ruby and Annika, they felt they had some cachet for living a sophisticated life abroad even if it wasn't what they expected.
And in another sense, it helped isolate the characters once they left the newsroom. They had something together in the workplace, even if they weren't always aware of what their colleagues were dealing with, but they navigated life like marooned islanders outside the workplace. Rome accepted them but didn't really need them in its vibrant culture. I guess Katherine would be an exception since she had the relationship with Dario, and there was that idea that he didn't play by an American woman's rules (or an American woman's rules per the author's ideas).
I agree that Rome provided a scenic backdrop and lent itself to interesting back stories for the characters. Great point about it isolating the Americans, too.
But I would've liked Rachman to make more of the setting. The characters weren't out and about very much, so I didn't feel like the city was integral to the story.
Agreed. I enjoyed the setting for all the reasons you guys mentioned, but, like Erin, I could have used more. "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone," which we read in the novella club, is probably my favorite foreigner-in-Rome book just because it capitalizes so much on the Italian setting. You feel like you're there, in the middle of all that ancient decay and glamor. Henry James' "Daisy Miller" and "Portrait of a Lady" are also exceptionally evocative of Rome.
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