A Month in Siena

A short but beautifully written look at grief (the loss of his father) and Art (Sienna!) and a study in how those two intersect or diverge. Interesting to think about art as a healing influence in your life. If you want a page-turner or a guidebook to Sienna, this is not it. But if you want something slow & contemplative, written by a wonderful writer, this is perfect. Stands alone, though reading the author’s previous book about his father’s disappearance (titled The Return) ,which won the Pulitzer Prize, might be a bonus.

This is a personal rumination on justice, loss, and belonging, that uses some personally significant artwork to unpack the author's experiences relating to the mysterious disappearance of his still missing father some years earlier. It doesn't profess to be a work of art history, so I'm not sure what the reviewer Fabrizio was expecting (that one star is rather harsh). It is instead a subtle reflection on the author's attempt to come to terms with his father's disappearance and his own sense of disconnection.

El autor nos lleva a un recorrido por las obras de arte más importantes de Siena y nos explica cosas de su vida entre diferentes culturas y continentes. Las "clases de arte" son muy interesantes si en general os gusta la historia (del arte). Un libro tranquilo que se lee en pocos días.

The author is known for The Return, his book dealing with his post-Gaddafi return to Libya, to try to find out what happened to his father, who had been kidnapped and taken to prison there twenty-two years before. A Month in Siena is another memoir, but also a book about art. In it the author decides to indulge his life- long love of Sienese art by staying in Siena for a therapeutic month, following the publication of The Return, and to immerse himself in the art and city of Duccio and Lorenzetti. The result is a book full of humanity and art, and a particularly human vein of art writing. It's about the spending of time and the personal experience of paintings rather than, say, the dates and technical developments. He spends a lot of time in the Pinacoteca, and has wise words to say about gallery attendants. He makes it to San Bernardino too, and the overwhelming cemetery just outside the walls that does indeed boggle the mind. A book combining warmth, humanity and an effortlessly strong flavour of the city itself.A fictionalcities review

This isn’t a book just about Sienna nor of art but a personal rumination of life, loss, and the memories that drift in and out of consciousness.He writes just like he roams in the city, gently, quietly, and tenderly as an explorer of Sienna and the ghostly sorrows and comforting realizations that visit him.A book that is a perfect companion for those of us who are going through their own life transitions - a reminder that not all of us that wander aimlessly are ever lost - we are merely finding our own way through this maze of life.