From The Life Sentence: On Donna Leon
Another re-post of an article of mine from Lisa Levy's late lamented site The Life Sentence: Obsession and Betrayal in Venice (Donna Leon 101) BY GLENN HARPER In a 2003 interview at italian-mysteries.com , Donna Leon said that she doesn’t allow her very popular Commissario Guido Brunetti series, set in Venice, to be published in Italian translation because, “I don’t want to be famous where I live … the people in my neighborhood know that I am the American who lives opposite Nando and above Angelo. It would just change the tenor of my life.” The 24 th book in the series, Falling in Love , deals directly with the consequences of the kind of fame Leon wants to avoid in her adopted country, in particular the phenomenon of the obsessed fan. Leon uses one of the ongoing themes in her series, the opera, as the setting for her examination of fandom, and as the central character she has chosen one of her few non-police recurring characters, the singer Flavia Petrelli, wh...