On Persephone's Island by Mary Taylor Simeti

Mary Taylor Simeti is the author of “Sicilian Food”, probably still the most authoritative work available on the subject in English.

Sadly, Phelps’s nephews and nieces are not now in a position to maintain the house and have offered it for sale.

Daphne Phelps died in 2005 at the age of 94. There is also an hilarious chapter detailing her encounters with the head of the local Mafia. As we read, we get to know Phelps and observe her falling in love with Sicily. She regales us with tales of some of the people she entertained at Casa Cuseni, among them the philosopher Bertrand Russell, the author Roald Dahl and Caitlin Thomas, widow of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and not an easy guest. Phelps tells us of the ups and downs of running the property, the characters who work for her and the townsfolk she meets. She had to struggle to hold on to the house in the early days and anyone who has moved here will identify with her brushes with Italian bureaucracy. However, she surprised herself by deciding to stay and maintain it. In 1947 Phelps inherited the beautiful Casa Cuseni in Taormina and came to the island from Britain to inspect the house with a view to selling it. The first book is “A House in Sicily” by Daphne Phelps. I think these books could also be of interest to any lover of Italy in general. These are not travel guides but well-written, informative works by people who have made their homes here - people whose love for the island shines through in every word they write.

Today I want to share with you some of my favourite reading about Sicily. ‘Simeti has done a rare thing: she has written a happy book about Sicily and yet there is an undercurrent of sadness, one true to the reality of the island. It is written by a fascinated outsider, but with the intimacy of an insider: wife to a Sicilian, mother to two Sicilian teenagers, gardener, cook and carer for a suspicious mother-in-law. On Persephone’s Island chronicles a life divided between an apartment in the city of Palermo and weekends and the summer devoted to sustaining life on an old family farm. The American Mary Taylor Simeti arrived on the island after college to work as a volunteer on Danilo Dolci’s remarkable social welfare programme, but went on to marry and make her life here. A celebration of the Mediterranean island both Simeti and the Greek goddess of the harvest call home.Ī year in the life of glorious Sicily: its seasons and its sacred festivals, its almonds and orange and demanding family life, its casual assassinations and village feasts, its weather and its people.

On Persephone's Island by Mary Taylor Simeti