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Outstanding
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USA Today Deirdre Donahue
I cannot stop haunting travel websites in search of cheap fares to Italy. Angels is that good.
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Outstanding
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Kirkus Reviews
Berendt does great justice to an exalted city that has rightly fascinated the likes of Henry James, Robert Browning and many filmmakers throughout the world. [1 Aug 2005, p.823]
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Outstanding
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Library Journal Rita Simmons
An intimate portrait of a city that has survived floods, government corruption, decay, rising water levels, invasions, and attempts by international organizations to "save" it--all while remaining a bastion of art and a place of unique beauty. [15 Sep 2005, p.80]
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
Berendt has delivered an intriguing mosaic of modern life in Venice, which makes for first-rate travel writing, albeit one that lacks a compelling core story to keep one reading into the night. [18 Jul 2005, p.198]
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Favorable
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Washington Post Jonathan Yardley
The cast of characters is suitably various and flamboyant, and Berendt's prose... is precise, evocative and witty.
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Favorable
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Chicago Tribune James Polk
[Berendt] allows what had once seemed the central fact of his narrative to unfold so gradually, surrounded by so many vivid side issues, that eventually it is reduced to just one more scene in a vast and sweeping tableau. And once more, the author inhabits the story, not as a participant, nor as a
detached observer exactly, but rather as one who has placed himself at the center of the action and has let it wash over him like a rising spring tide. [25 Sep 2005]
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Favorable
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Los Angeles Times Nicholas Delbanco
For those who have not been there, this book will whet an appetite to go, and those who know the city well will yearn, in reading, to return. [9 Oct 2005]
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Favorable
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Boston Globe Thrity Umrigar
It takes an inordinate amount of willpower to read Berendt's funny, insightful, illuminating travelogue and not want to board the next flight to the mysterious, magical city of canals.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph John Adamson
With his keen eye, laconic prose, and almost father-confessor-like ability to extract self-incriminating admissions from his various interviewees, Berendt is the most urbane and entertaining of guides through Venice's social labyrinth.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Janet Maslin
Though [Berendt] lacks a narrative of great urgency, he nonetheless delivers an urbane, beautifully fashioned book with much exotic charm.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Adam Goodheart
Berendt's voice is gentle and tolerant, reveling in human complexities; he has no pretensions of offering anything more than a good story.
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Favorable
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The New Yorker
This book is less sensational than its predecessor, and the whodunit at the center, the burning of the opera house La Fenice, is really far less interesting than the smaller machinations and intrigues that Berendt finds along the way.
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Favorable
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Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese
Berendt writes... gracefully and with such a sharp eye for the telling, catty detail. [30 Sep 2005, p.97]
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Mixed
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The Independent Matthew Hoffman
This idiosyncratic investigation is a worthy addition to the vast literature about Venice, but hardly a significant one.
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Mixed
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The Spectator Jonathan Keates
The City of Falling Angels hardly turns Venice into the festering Babylon-on-sea created from Savannah in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Had Berendt arrived 50 years earlier, when the place was less like a theme park with a container port attached, maybe the quality of the sleaze would have been more rewarding.
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Mixed
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The Economist
A broad-brush approach can be a good route for a reporter to the bestseller list, but it is difficult not also to feel a bat-squeak of sympathy for his victims. Whether it was his intention or not, Mr Berendt exposes Venice as a self-absorbed and heartless city.
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Mixed
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Chicago Sun-Times Carlo Wolff
Absorbed separately, the stories [Berendt] tells can be fascinating. But his failure to bind them together for a discernible purpose keeps Falling Angels from being magical; rather, it's ambitious, readable product placement.
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Mixed
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Daily Telegraph Philip Hensher
This sort of book depends on the author's ability to pick out a decent story... some of Berendt's witnesses, alas, quickly reveal themselves as terrible bores; you can't imagine why he didn't drop them and go and look for something better. They sound like the sort of Venetians you end up having to pay to go away and stop bothering you.
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Mixed
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Lisa Pasold
Berendt's charm as a raconteur suits the narrow Venetian streets, but some of his stories lead straight into a dead-end calle. [8 Oct 2005]
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Mixed
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The Onion A.V. Club Keith Phipps
It's questionable to what degree Berendt sought out examples that contributed to the bigger picture, and the sense that his conclusions are predetermined is only enhanced by the precise, novel-like dialogue. But the story of Berendt's Venice tenure is no less compelling for it.
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Unfavorable
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The Guardian Peter Conrad
It's not only the ethics of his procedure that make me uncomfortable; I'm even more bothered by the clunkily implausible aesthetics of his reportage. To pass off his sleuthing research as narrative, he has to coax his informants to mouth paragraphs of dreary exposition disguised as cocktail-party chitchat.
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