John Berendt - oh, to have eight years to travel

I just completed two works by John Berendt - "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and "The City of Falling Angels." Both billed as travelogues, the novels capture more of the location through the people Berendt meets than the average tourist might.

For example, Berendt spends eight years traveling back and forth between New York City and Savannah in "Midnight." Who gets to spend eight years writing a travel book? Berendt's years weren't spent all in vain enjoying the sweet Georgia peaches though. During his time in the South the characters he encounters, oops I mean people, are more telling than an description of Bonaventure's cemetery could ever be.

People like Joe Odom weave in and out of the sounds and sights of Savannah crafting a story that begins with the smoothness of fine whiskey, blasts in the middle like a gun shot (wait it was a gun shot) and ends like the South during the Civil War, a heroic battalion refusing to die. Then there are the juxtapositions of a brassy Chablis and the Southern gentrified Lee Adler - making the twists and turns of what you expect to be a sleepy story feel more like a rollicking ride through highs and lows of a society that refuses to live by anyone's rules, even their own.

The City of Falling Angels was interesting and well crafted, but I'm glad I read it first. Had I read it after "Midnight," I would have been disappointed in the ride. While Venice provided a romantic backdrop for the story of a treacherous fire, it's characters proved more scholarly than friendly. Living in their Venitian palaces, the characters of Berendt's second novel seemed more unattainable and even less realistic than those in "Midnight."

The world in which they lived was well described, but not as vivid as the squares of Savannah in "Midnight." The carnival nights of Venice didn't compare to the luster of the Southern city's St. Patrick's Day Parade.

Comparison's aside, Berendt's book was fascinating in the details he extracted from the people that filled its pages. The simple things he researched for the book were impressive. The look into the glass making history of Venice and even the family feuds that mar most business histories was endearing.

The overall novel's thread of fire of Fenice was sometime lost along the rambling canals' way as Berendt took breaks to introduce new Venitians or expatriates or others along the way. The story was loosely held together and if not for Berendt's finely detailed and enchanting travels off the trail, the novel would have been lost.

In all, though, I rank "Midnight" above "Falling Angels," as a more masterful and intoxicating work.