A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
A rather slight, meandering memoir. Matar does the thing I’ve often wished I could do: settle in a small, congenial, picturesque European town for a month, and spend my days walking, exploring, and looking at art. I got two days in Assisi a couple of years ago, and wished I had ten times longer. At least.
Erudite, thoughtful, patient and pensive, Matar spends so much time looking at a single painting that the women guards at the local museum give him one of their folding chairs so he will be more comfortable. But somehow, his ponderings remain just that: his own ponderings. They give a little basic history of the paintings, but provide little enlightenment or depth of understanding. There is much to be said for serious, detailed observation, especially perhaps from the eye of a Muslim on these ineradicably Christian works, but it just doesn’t quite go anywhere. There are color reproductions of the main pictures he looks at, but they are small and murky in color – Google them on your iPad for better images. Other chapters are devoted to friendly encounters with immigrant residents of Siena, a loving wander in Rome with his wife, a bench in a local cemetery, and the ravages of the Black Death. Overall, it’s a pleasant read, with some interest for early Renaissance Italian painting, but felt rather like a bunch of excerpts from his journal bound together. A light hors d’oeuvre, but not ultimately very satisfying.
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