The Politics of Washing: Real Life in Venice
With four children in tow, Coles and her husband move from the comfort of an English village to live and work in Venice. The tourist vision of a baroque city floating in ineffable beauty above the Adriatic mist gives way to the reality of conducting life, finding an apartment, getting kids to school, shopping without a car, dealing with medical emergencies, and learning to contend with cranky natives bickering endlessly in the incomprehensible local dialect over what defines a real Venetian. Her brood of energetic kids makes her stand out in a city stagnating from a swiftly declining birthrate, and the children have trouble thriving in authoritarian, eager-to-punish classrooms. Coles learns to hang laundry outdoors properly and teaches herself to row a boat only to feature in tourist photos. Anyone who has visited Venice will find this dose of reality sharply, yet lovingly, contrasts with la serenissima’s fairy-tale facade. --Mark Knoblauch