Marcus of Umbria: What an Italian Dog Taught an American Girl about Love
Tired of laboring in city cubicles, Justine van der Leun sublets her studio apartment, leaves her magazine job, and moves to Collelungo, Italy, population: 200. There, in the ancient city center of a historic Umbrian village, she sets up house with the handsome local gardener she met on vacation only weeks earlier. This impulsive decision launches an eye-opening series of misadventures when village life and romance turn out to be radically different from what she had imagined. Love lost with...
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People magazine calls Marcus of Umbria “charming”; Marley & Me author John Grogan proclaims that Justine van der Leun “is blessed with the elusive gift of storytelling”; Like Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen calls the book “warm, comic, and beautifully descriptive. I devoured this compassionate and sharply funny book in one sitting.” Readers will delight in this tale of an urbanite who leaves her magazine job to move to Collelungo,Italy, population: 200. There, in the ancient city center of a historic Umbrian village, she sets up house with the enticing local gardener she met on vacation only weeks earlier. This impulsive decision launches an eye-opening series of misadventures when village life and romance turn out to be radically different from what she had imagined.Love lost with the gardener is found instead with Marcus, an abandoned English pointer that she rescues. With Marcus by her side, Justine discovers the bliss and hardship of living in the countryside:herding sheep, tending to wild horses, picking olives with her adopted Italian family, and trying her best to learn the regional dialect. The result is a rich, comic, and unconventional portrait about learning to live and love in the most unexpected ways. Publishers Weekly A sweet, disarming story finds a young New York editor venturing to Italy to pursue romance with a sexy gardener and ending up falling for a neglected dog instead. In her straightforward, unembellished prose, Van der Leun recounts how she shucked her job editing the Letters page for an unidentified “lifestyle” magazine because she wasn’t good at getting along with the other grasping workers, broke up with “a perfect modern man” who was also Mr. Boring, and spent a summer month at an acquaintance’s house in Collelungo, a sheep-farming village of 200 souls in Umbria. There she met one of the town’s sons, the handsome, earnest gardener Emanuele, whose entire hard-working, ample-eating, non-English-speaking family she grew to know and love over the year she returned to live in the town. But she was appalled by the younger brother’s treatment of his animals, specifically the dogs he used for hunting, and nursed to health a sadly starving young English pointer she named Marcus. Over the year, the relationship with Emanuele did not blossom; but Van der Leun became crazy about her sleek, dark-headed fast-running bird dog—a female, it turned out, who needed quickly to be spayed. The author manages to capture the lovely, vanishing Old World ways of these tightly knit people, while also interweaving a heart-melting tale. (June)
\ Publishers WeeklyA sweet, disarming story finds a young New York editor venturing to Italy to pursue romance with a sexy gardener and ending up falling for a neglected dog instead. In her straightforward, unembellished prose, Van der Leun recounts how she shucked her job editing the Letters page for an unidentified “lifestyle” magazine because she wasn’t good at getting along with the other grasping workers, broke up with “a perfect modern man” who was also Mr. Boring, and spent a summer month at an acquaintance’s house in Collelungo, a sheep-farming village of 200 souls in Umbria. There she met one of the town’s sons, the handsome, earnest gardener Emanuele, whose entire hard-working, ample-eating, non-English-speaking family she grew to know and love over the year she returned to live in the town. But she was appalled by the younger brother’s treatment of his animals, specifically the dogs he used for hunting, and nursed to health a sadly starving young English pointer she named Marcus. Over the year, the relationship with Emanuele did not blossom; but Van der Leun became crazy about her sleek, dark-headed fast-running bird dog—a female, it turned out, who needed quickly to be spayed. The author manages to capture the lovely, vanishing Old World ways of these tightly knit people, while also interweaving a heart-melting tale. (June)\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalAfter a month's stay in Collenlungo, Italy, the 25-year-old author writes of returning briefly to her life in New York City only to book a one-way ticket back. By continuing her budding relationship with the handsome musician/gardener Emanuele, she hopes to find a more fulfilling life. Shortly thereafter, both her affair and the focus of her affection alter unexpectedly when she rescues a female pointer (dubbed Marcus) from near starvation at the farm where Emanuele's family lived. In this region, animals in general are considered either food or the means for attaining it, and over time Van der Leun becomes appalled at their inhumane treatment. Ultimately, as her affair is dwindling, she also begins preparing for her return to the United States and realizes she cannot condemn her beloved Marcus to this distressing fate. VERDICT Readers should think of this comical but sardonic chronicle as more of a combination of Eat, Pray, Love with a dash of A Year in Provence than a pet memoir, as the story itself is far more about the journey than the animal. [See also "Short Takes: Pet Memoirs," LJ 2/1/10, p. 88.—Ed.]—Judy Brink-Drescher, Molloy Coll. Lib., Rockville Centre, NY\ \
