Book #45: Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr

I loved All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr so much that when I read that he'd written a memoir about a year he spent in Rome (ostensibly) working on his novel, I wanted to read it. His writing style is so beautiful--descriptive, but short sentences, easy to read--that I wanted to get more of it. He tells about the year he and his family spent in Rome while he was a fellow at the American Academy there--with his wife and his six-month-old twins. Obviously their kids being so young made the timing of this opportunity less than optimal, but their year in Rome was so intertwined with his experience with his new sons, as a new father, that this memoir is thoroughly about both. It was also interesting because they were there in the year that Pope John Paul II died, so they experienced the enormous mourning and funeral and he writes about that as well. I loved the details about his sons, how they grew in the year they were there, and the obvious joy with which Doerr writes about holding them and being their father (along with the inevitable and obvious struggle of parenting twins). But I also loved the intricate detail he wrote about Rome, and how they got to know the city and experience it there. It makes me want to go there--more than I even thought about it before. This was a great audiobook to listen to, and both aspects of his narrative (parenthood and travelogue) were very appealing to me.