Marcus of Umbria: What an Italian Dog Taught an American Girl about Love [Hardcover]
From 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)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Tired of her life in New York, van der Leun takes a vacation in the small town of Collelungo, in Umbria, Italy, where she falls in love with a rakish farmer named Emanuele. Soon she is back in Collelungo for good, moving in with Emanuele and his family on their sheep farm. When Justine finds an abandoned hunting dog, she promptly takes it in as her own. The dog, whom she names Marcus, becomes her constant companion around the Umbrian countryside as she observes the rituals of life on a farm, from the work of sheep herding, pig slaughtering, and horse training to the everyday rituals of family life. When her romance with Emanuele turns sour, she finds it hard to pry herself out of Italy and wonders if she can return to New York. And if her thoroughly Italian dog can survive there. Van der Leun�s memoir is a funny and surprisingly tender story about culture shock, and the unwavering love of a dog. --Hilary Hatton
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)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Tired of her life in New York, van der Leun takes a vacation in the small town of Collelungo, in Umbria, Italy, where she falls in love with a rakish farmer named Emanuele. Soon she is back in Collelungo for good, moving in with Emanuele and his family on their sheep farm. When Justine finds an abandoned hunting dog, she promptly takes it in as her own. The dog, whom she names Marcus, becomes her constant companion around the Umbrian countryside as she observes the rituals of life on a farm, from the work of sheep herding, pig slaughtering, and horse training to the everyday rituals of family life. When her romance with Emanuele turns sour, she finds it hard to pry herself out of Italy and wonders if she can return to New York. And if her thoroughly Italian dog can survive there. Van der Leun�s memoir is a funny and surprisingly tender story about culture shock, and the unwavering love of a dog. --Hilary Hatton
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