In Italy by Cynthia Zarin review – essays to bookmark with a train ticket stub | Autobiography and memoir
The American poet Cynthia Zarin was 19 when she first travelled to Venice. The trip was a summer sojourn of sorts with “a boy I thought I might marry”, and the city turned out to be hot and expensive to room in. Zarin and her boyfriend stayed in a grotty boarding house in Padua and took the train to Venice one morning, planning to meet another friend of Zarin’s, who was also making a day trip from Florence. The couple ate veal sandwiches and idled around the steps of the Santa Maria della Salute, but Zarin soon wearied of…