Venice is one of the most beautiful, haunting places I’ve ever visited. Its winding, cobblestoned alleyways; hidden nooks and crannies; dark waters; and old churches and palazzos bring me straight into a creepy, Gothic wonderland. Here are some books that capture this ambience and will get you psyched for a trip there!
The Comfort of Strangers, Ian McEwan: Venice isn’t mentioned explicitly, but it’s clearly the setting for this bizarre tale. Although McEwan is now more so known for works such as Atonement and Amsterdam, he’s written a couple Gothic novels and was even once known as Ian Macabre. In The Comfort of Strangers, a couple on vacation makes friends with a local husband and wife, whose twisted and sinister side quickly becomes apparent.
"Don’t Look Now", Daphne du Maurier: Du Maurier, who authored the short story “The Birds” and novel Rebecca (both famously adapted by Alfred Hitchcock), is a master in suspense. "Don’t Look Now" is a short story that follows a couple vacationing in Venice as they grapple with the loss of their daughter. The story perfectly captures the dizzying nature of Venice’s layout—it’s easy to get turned around, to see things that may not be as they seem.
The City of Falling Angels, John Berendt: Although Berendt is famous for his work Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, this book is also quite compelling: although non-fiction, it reads almost like a novel, it’s just so captivating. The story explores the lives of several people who live in Venice, in the wake of a 1996 fire that destroyed La Fenice opera house. Although the book is mostly situated against this backdrop, it also has tons of fascinating historical nuggets on folks who once lived in this grand but crumbling city.
Of course, there are a million works—from A Death in Venice to The Midwife of Venice to Donna Leon’s detective novels—that I’ve not included. Such a city has inspired too much to fully cover! Let me know in the comments if you have a book (or movie, play, whatever!) that you’d like to recommend. (I just saw A Haunting in Venice in the theater—although it was very loosely adapted from Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party, I really enjoyed it. It so well embodies Venice’s spookiness: it’s set in—what else?—an ostensibly haunted palazzo.)
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