Anthony Doerr

The author describes the year he spent in Rome after winning the Rome Prize, including his adventures around the city, life in a foreign but welcoming country, and parenthood as it applies to his newborn twins.

On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World

Four Seasons in Rome

Ali Angco

Nadine 

Having adored “all the light..” I wanted to be fascinated by this but actually it was a pedestrian boring account of the bumbling mono-lingual American in Rome struggling through what every parent struggles through albeit usually the female of the species on her own as if it were something new and special. Disappointed.

Jeremy Anderberg

Enjoyed this short memoir of Doerr's time living in Rome with his family (including 6-month-old twins). Equally moving on parenting, the beauty (and dirtiness!) of Rome, being an expat and a foreigner . . . there are passages I'll certainly be returning to again and again. 

Longer review coming later.

Laura Allen

Jamie Meek

'Four seasons in Rome' charts the repercussions of that day, describing Doerr's varied adventures in one of the most enchanting cities in the world, and the first year of parenthood. He reads Pliny, Dante, and Keats - the chroniclers of Rome who came before him - and visits the piazzas, temples, and ancient cisterns they describe. He attends the vigil of a dying Pope John Paul II and takes his twins to the Pantheon in December to wait for snow to fall through the oculus. He and his family are embraced by the butchers, grocers, and bakers of the neighbourhood, whose clamour of stories and idiosyncratic child-rearing advice is as compelling as the city itself.

Four Seasons in Rome On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World