Bøger af Gabriella Contestabile

Elio Barati's perfumery shop in Florence marks its entrance with a mosaic star. This shop immerses Elio in the artisanal world he loves, but he harbors a regret. As a young man he created a full-fledged perfume of jasmine, iris, and cypress at the renowned Ecole des Parfumeurs in Grasse-a fragrance his idealism and stubbornness boxed away before ever bringing it to light. A second star now brightens Elio's life, his daughter Romina, an artist. She has her father's unrealized talent, a precise and intuitive sense of smell. She's also inherited more challenging traits of Elio's: unbridled ambition and an insatiable wonder for the world. But changes ripple through modern-day Florence. Artisan traditions wane; and when Romina tells her father she has no intention of running the family business Elio fights to hold on to the Florence he cherishes. Confronting the lost opportunities of his youth, Elio is thrust into this journey by five spirited women: his Greek mother, Elena; his mentor Palma; his soul mate, Marina; his astronomer wife, Sofia; and finally his beautiful artist daughter, who like the city of her birth, shows him how tradition and modernity can and must co-exist. Now he must alter his own path by harnessing the transformative powers of the fine and artisanal arts.

A pandemic survivor walks the trails of the Cinque Terre and looks back on a friend's battle with AIDS decades ago. A daughter returns to her mother's beloved Florence as a final goodbye, only to rediscover herself inside the curtailed reincarnations of Florence's past. A frazzled mother misreads her young son's struggles with identity and self-preservation; another mother and her daughter fall under the enchantment of a mysterious woman in Venice offering a phantom bird of flight and possibility. And three daughters escort their mother back to their family vineyard in Abruzzo for one last confrontation with the past and the pursuit of something, if anything, that can be salvaged from a time when women were told to follow men.

How do Italian women turn the ordinary into extraordinary? Why do their lives seem less complicated, but more complete and alluring?Discover what's behind this seductive ethos of effortless chic, and how to live an extraordinary and stylish life, ';all' italiana'.Sass, Smarts, and Stilettos is not just a celebration of Italian women, but of all women; of their innate ability to think outside the box, to make magic from mayhem, and to have a wild good time doing it.