“A good fragrance is really a powerful cocktail of memories and emotion.”
----Jeffrey Stepakoff, an American author
My Rating: 4 out 5 stars
Gabriella Contestabile, an Italian author, pens her debut novel, The Artisan's Star that is a cleverly woven travelogue inside a story about a perfume-maker and the women and their fragrance surrounding his life.
Synopsis: Elio Barati’s perfumery shop in Florence marks its entrance with a mosaic star. This shop immerses Elio in the artisanal world he loves, but he harbors a regret. As a young man he created a full-fledged perfume of jasmine, iris, and cypress at the renowned Ecole des Parfumeurs in Grasse—a fragrance his idealism and stubbornness boxed away before ever bringing it to light.
A second star now brightens Elio’s life, his daughter Romina, an artist. She has her father’s unrealized talent, a precise and intuitive sense of smell. She’s also inherited more challenging traits of Elio’s: unbridled ambition and an insatiable wonder for the world.
But changes ripple through modern-day Florence. Artisan traditions wane; and when Romina tells her father she has no intention of running the family business Elio fights to hold on to the Florence he cherishes. Confronting the lost opportunities of his youth, Elio is thrust into this journey by five spirited women: his Greek mother, Elena; his mentor Palma; his soul mate, Marina; his astronomer wife, Sofia; and finally his beautiful artist daughter, who like the city of her birth, shows him how tradition and modernity can and must co-exist.
Now he must alter his own path by harnessing the transformative powers of the fine and artisanal arts.
The story begins with Elio Barati's perfume shop in Florence. Elio is born and brought in this beautiful and elegant city and through his life story we get to the depths of the history of Florence's perfumery and we learn the importance of perfume making with all the dos and don'ts. Elio's early memories about his Greek mother, Elena, shows us a lot about his mother's demeanor, then gradually, Elio's memory shifts from his first love to his first mentor to his wife and then to his daughter.
In fact, through memories, we couldn't contemplate with Elio's character, instead, we could understand the women of Elio's life very deeply. The female characters are all very strong, educated, influential and one who could make their own decisions. It felt more like Elio was dependent on these women and without whom his success, family or career wouldn't have been possible. The perfume making and how a perfume is made from flowers and other natural flowers and herbs was strikingly portrayed in the book, and since I had no idea how perfumes were generated, the book simply drawn me to it's very core, and kept me engaged.
The writing is no doubt very beautiful and with her writing, the author sets a breezy, romantic mood for us and so it really feels good to read about Florence and the perfumes of Elio. Unfortunately, Elio, the protagonist, didn't strike me an someone to root for or sympathize with, instead, it was very boring and dull when the narration kept on shifting base from one topic to another with no proper conclusion. But I could feel the Florentine flair in her writing style that no matter what, kept me glued to the charm and the beauty of this story.
The backdrop of the book is really breath-taking from Elio's early days to his old days with his wife and daughter. The author's picturesque painting of Florence is so vivid that when I closed my eyes, I could picture myself right on those narrow streets of Florence or at times riding a blue vespa or sitting by an old cafe. Moreover, if you're planning to visit Florence, I bet this book will be your perfect guide, since the author have drawn out the whole map of Florence with Elio's story and through his memories, the author tried to convey us the must-see places of Florence.
Verdict: Fancy a trip to the city of artists and art? Then do read this book to take a whirlwind trip to Florence and in bonus you will even get to experience some of the exotic fragrances of the world.
Courtesy: I received a copy of the book for a blog tour purpose.
Book Purchase Links:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Interview:
Me: Hello and welcome to my blog, Gabriella. Congratulations on your new book, The Artisan's Star. Please share with us the story behind your book, The Artisan's Star.
Gabriella: Thank you Aditi for inviting me to your blog, which I’m enjoying tremendously.
While I didn’t know it at the time this story began when my father gave me a copy of “The Passionate Sightseer” by Bernard Berenson. Even though the pictures were in black and white and the story of little relevance to a nine-year-old it sparked a lifelong passion for books, travel, and art. Years later, while researching ‘The Artisan’s Star’, I found an article on Villa I Tatti, Berenson’s residence outside Florence. So this story, churning around inside my head, had led me back, full-circle to the same dog-eared book my dad gave me decades ago.
I’d emigrated with my parents from Italy to North America on the Andrea Doria, so many of the references to dress, food, and practices in post-war Florence are from vivid memories of my parents taking us back to our hometown, Avezzano, every summer. I still remember my aunt’s Fiat Cinquecento, the sarta (seamstress) and sarto (tailor) who would make our clothes, and my grandmother lifting a huge water urn and carrying on her head through the center of Antrosano.
Since mother’s an accomplished seamstress and my father only wore shoes ‘made in Italy’ our household appreciation for all things Italian was sacrosanct. We bought our breads from a pasticcieria on Ditmars Boulevard and our meats from a Sicilian butcher. And every time we returned to Avezzano we visited our local artisans to purchase, and to marvel at the “living art” they created.
Years later my work took me through the villages of Tuscany, the fields of Grasse, and into perfumer laboratories to learn about raw materials, extraction, and fragrance composition. Perfume became the metaphor for Elio’s life journey, and all our life journeys. The immediate top-note of a perfume introduces us to the scent. It sparkles like youth and its multiple possibilities. The mid-note, as the perfume warms on the skin, parallels our middle years when we put down roots, raise families, build careers. And the base note, the warmest and most sensual part of the fragrance, represents our later years when it’s too late to realize the dreams of our youth, but the ideal moment to imagine a richer, more profound dream, one that often involves ‘giving back’ in a meaningful way.
Since it took me so long to write “The Artisan’s Star” the story evolved over time, bringing in interlocking themes, notably the changes I’ve seen in Florence over the years, including the decline of family owned businesses and artisan traditions. Florence, like Elio, is at a crossroads. She needs to stop the erosion but practicality and financial concerns are pushing back. She will need to do what’s she’s done so well for centuries, draw on all her artistic resources, to re-imagine and re-invent her future, brilliantly.
Gabriella: Thank you Aditi for inviting me to your blog, which I’m enjoying tremendously.
While I didn’t know it at the time this story began when my father gave me a copy of “The Passionate Sightseer” by Bernard Berenson. Even though the pictures were in black and white and the story of little relevance to a nine-year-old it sparked a lifelong passion for books, travel, and art. Years later, while researching ‘The Artisan’s Star’, I found an article on Villa I Tatti, Berenson’s residence outside Florence. So this story, churning around inside my head, had led me back, full-circle to the same dog-eared book my dad gave me decades ago.
I’d emigrated with my parents from Italy to North America on the Andrea Doria, so many of the references to dress, food, and practices in post-war Florence are from vivid memories of my parents taking us back to our hometown, Avezzano, every summer. I still remember my aunt’s Fiat Cinquecento, the sarta (seamstress) and sarto (tailor) who would make our clothes, and my grandmother lifting a huge water urn and carrying on her head through the center of Antrosano.
Since mother’s an accomplished seamstress and my father only wore shoes ‘made in Italy’ our household appreciation for all things Italian was sacrosanct. We bought our breads from a pasticcieria on Ditmars Boulevard and our meats from a Sicilian butcher. And every time we returned to Avezzano we visited our local artisans to purchase, and to marvel at the “living art” they created.
Years later my work took me through the villages of Tuscany, the fields of Grasse, and into perfumer laboratories to learn about raw materials, extraction, and fragrance composition. Perfume became the metaphor for Elio’s life journey, and all our life journeys. The immediate top-note of a perfume introduces us to the scent. It sparkles like youth and its multiple possibilities. The mid-note, as the perfume warms on the skin, parallels our middle years when we put down roots, raise families, build careers. And the base note, the warmest and most sensual part of the fragrance, represents our later years when it’s too late to realize the dreams of our youth, but the ideal moment to imagine a richer, more profound dream, one that often involves ‘giving back’ in a meaningful way.
Since it took me so long to write “The Artisan’s Star” the story evolved over time, bringing in interlocking themes, notably the changes I’ve seen in Florence over the years, including the decline of family owned businesses and artisan traditions. Florence, like Elio, is at a crossroads. She needs to stop the erosion but practicality and financial concerns are pushing back. She will need to do what’s she’s done so well for centuries, draw on all her artistic resources, to re-imagine and re-invent her future, brilliantly.
Me: What was your source of inspiration for your book, The Artisan's Star?
Gabriella: In the mid 1980s I worked for a short while in a family-owned perfumery in Florence, called Profumeria Aline. I’d just started a dream job, as International Training Director for Clinique Cosmetics, and part of my orientation was to work in various perfumeries in Italy and France. I was intrigued by this family-owned business that had been around since 1911. It’s still there today. I loved the elegance of the space; the soft lighting, the polished wood, and all those crystal atomizers with their trailing pumps. The entire business was conducted with such grace, and respect, as if everything one touched and described were a work of art. It reprised a time when perfumes were made with oils pressed from petals picked in the early dawn hours in Grasse and blended into compositions like notes of music. When I first smelled “L’Heure Bleu” and read about Jacques Guerlain as he stood on a bridge at dusk and noticed how the flowers released their final burst of scent before closing their petals for the night, I decided to cross the Ponte Santa Trinita at dusk. It was then that I knew why artists and writers would swoon over the brushstrokes of ‘chiaroscuro’ light across the Tuscan sky. At the time the quote ‘It’s that moment when the sky has lost its sun and has yet to find its stars” was just a pretty sentence. As I continued to work on the book, it became an anchor for the story. Elio has arrived at that point in his life when he can no longer pursue the lost dreams of his youth, his ‘sun’ so to speak. But he can, with the maturity and wisdom of years, forge a new future, and find his ‘stars’.
Me: The book is set across Florence. Did you travel extensively for the purpose of research?
Gabriella: Yes. I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Duomo. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. I remember my mother pointing to the colored marbles and reciting; green from Maremma, white from Carrara, red from Prato. No matter how many times I visit I still make it a point to see the Duomo and Giotto’s campanile at dawn, and the luminous Ponte Santa Trinita at dusk, usually with a gelato or a camera in hand.
I’ve returned numerous times since; as a student, a cosmetics exec, a newlywed, a mom, and finally a writer and owner of a travel business. I started Su Misura Journeys while I was finishing the novel because I’d seen a tailor shop in Florence with a sign advertising suits made ‘su misura’ (made to measure). It reminded me of the tailor in my hometown and the artistic and artisanal influences inherent in Italian fashion and design. Without Gentilleschi, Brunelleschi and Michelangelo, or La Scuola del Cuoio and the Antico Setificio Fiorentino we would not have a Ferragamo, a Cavalli, or a Patrizia Pepe.
Me: Tell us one trait of your main protagonists- Elio that intrigues you the most?
Gabriella: Yes. I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Duomo. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. I remember my mother pointing to the colored marbles and reciting; green from Maremma, white from Carrara, red from Prato. No matter how many times I visit I still make it a point to see the Duomo and Giotto’s campanile at dawn, and the luminous Ponte Santa Trinita at dusk, usually with a gelato or a camera in hand.
I’ve returned numerous times since; as a student, a cosmetics exec, a newlywed, a mom, and finally a writer and owner of a travel business. I started Su Misura Journeys while I was finishing the novel because I’d seen a tailor shop in Florence with a sign advertising suits made ‘su misura’ (made to measure). It reminded me of the tailor in my hometown and the artistic and artisanal influences inherent in Italian fashion and design. Without Gentilleschi, Brunelleschi and Michelangelo, or La Scuola del Cuoio and the Antico Setificio Fiorentino we would not have a Ferragamo, a Cavalli, or a Patrizia Pepe.
Me: Tell us one trait of your main protagonists- Elio that intrigues you the most?
Gabriella: His exuberant and uncompromising love of life. Elio savors the moment the way my father did. He would call me at my office to gush about the perfect tomato he just found in his garden, or to sing the aria from “Cavalleria Rusticana” swirling his finger in the air like Toscanini He once showed up at my office holding a tray of cappuccini for my staff. I was mortified. But he charmed everyone. We did pause to sip cappuccino and listen to his enchanting stories about Italy. And after he left we got back to work, with more joy and imagination than before.
But, while Elio is the central character his past, present, and future are very much shaped by the five female influences in his life, from his mother Elena to his daughter, Romina. Each of these women has a defined vision of her own, and it’s just that clarity and resolve that chip away at Elio’s intransigence. So while I place “The Artisan’s Star” in the category of general fiction, I also see it as women’s fiction, with the same moorings in female experience, but expressed through a male protagonist.
Me: How will you describe your journey so far as an author?
Gabriella: My journey was not unlike Elio’s. It was a confluence of events. While I’d always dreamed of being a writer I chose other careers (language teacher, business executive) to pay the bills. But they were all related in some way. I was still able to research and write about design, artifacts, and the social issues I care about; arts education, preserving artisan traditions, multi-culturalism. I was so impressed to see young leather artisans from other parts of the world apprenticing at La Scuola del Cuoio in Santa Croce. It tells me these important traditions will continue. All those life experiences were like the rays in the artisan’s star, with Florence in the center. I wish I could say I went about this with a pragmatic plan. I didn’t. I just went where my curiosity took me and for some strange reason it all came together in the end.
Me: Was it always your one true dream to be an author?
Gabriella: Yes, every since I secretly wrote stories inside my desk at school. I actually started writing because of my bad penmanship. Back then we were taught to write longhand without resting our wrists on the desk. I was hopeless. So my mother forced me to sit at our round wooden table and write my letters over and over again. I got so bored I started to write stories. Thankfully, my mom and my teachers encouraged me to keep writing. What’s also interesting is that both my parents, with only an eighth and a fifth grade education, wrote and spoke eloquent Italian.
I would also draw and cut out paper figures, open one of those large coffee table books filled with photos of landscapes or interiors, move the figures on the page, and act out a scene. So I suppose my fixation with setting started there. I like to enter a space, take in what’s around me, and imagine how the sensory elements affect a character. What does that character bring with her into that café, post office, subway station? How are his thoughts and emotions affected by the colors, sounds, smells, in the room? How is she different when she leaves that space?
Gabriella: Yes, every since I secretly wrote stories inside my desk at school. I actually started writing because of my bad penmanship. Back then we were taught to write longhand without resting our wrists on the desk. I was hopeless. So my mother forced me to sit at our round wooden table and write my letters over and over again. I got so bored I started to write stories. Thankfully, my mom and my teachers encouraged me to keep writing. What’s also interesting is that both my parents, with only an eighth and a fifth grade education, wrote and spoke eloquent Italian.
I would also draw and cut out paper figures, open one of those large coffee table books filled with photos of landscapes or interiors, move the figures on the page, and act out a scene. So I suppose my fixation with setting started there. I like to enter a space, take in what’s around me, and imagine how the sensory elements affect a character. What does that character bring with her into that café, post office, subway station? How are his thoughts and emotions affected by the colors, sounds, smells, in the room? How is she different when she leaves that space?
Me: How will you describe your normal writing day? And how do you get away from the stress of a long day's work?
Gabriella: I get up very early and write in a large notebook. Writing by hand feels so freeing at that time of day. Then it’s out for some exercise, either a long brisk walk or a bike ride. I get my best ideas when my feet are moving, so I break for walks throughout the day. If I’ve got major writer’s block, which happens frequently, I may walk for hours, and then sit down at the computer to transcribe and edit.
At the end of the day I de-stress by cooking, often with Pavarotti or Mina singing in the background. There’s something therapeutic about chopping up an onion and simmering the fresh tomatoes we, as a family, pick, crush, and jar every August at the height of the season.
Gabriella: I get up very early and write in a large notebook. Writing by hand feels so freeing at that time of day. Then it’s out for some exercise, either a long brisk walk or a bike ride. I get my best ideas when my feet are moving, so I break for walks throughout the day. If I’ve got major writer’s block, which happens frequently, I may walk for hours, and then sit down at the computer to transcribe and edit.
At the end of the day I de-stress by cooking, often with Pavarotti or Mina singing in the background. There’s something therapeutic about chopping up an onion and simmering the fresh tomatoes we, as a family, pick, crush, and jar every August at the height of the season.
Me: What is next up on your writing sleeves? Please tell us briefly about it.
Gabriella: A collection of short stories, set in different parts of Italy. Place and setting figure heavily in all of them, as does art in different forms. One story is based on my mother who, at age 93, still works. I explore what life was like for a willful young woman in a small provincial village in post war Italy, during a time when women had no voice.
There’ s also the first draft of a screenplay for “The Artisan’s Star”, which I wrote concurrently with the novel. This happened by chance. The novel was beginning to feel cinematic. I wanted the reader to feel herself in Florence so all the sensory elements had to pervade the narrative. To work on dialogue I took some screenwriting classes and this orphaned script, which is asking for a re-write, is the result.
Books and travel have informed so many of my life choices. There’s an intimacy one achieves through reading literature one doesn’t find anywhere else. I wrote “The Artisan’s Star” to celebrate artisanship, my Italian heritage, and the way art makes us better people. The Florentines, purveyors of the Renaissance, which extinguished the Dark Ages and changed the Western world, have always known this.
Me: Thank you so much Gabriella for joining me today on this interview. I wish you luck for all your future endeavors.
Gabriella: Thank you Aditi. It was a pleasure. And I so appreciate your passion and advocacy for books. Reading makes the world a better place.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Info:
Gabriella Contestabile is an author, educator, and owner of SU MISURA JOURNEYS, a boutique travel company connecting people to the artisans of Florence. She emigrated, with her parents, from Italy to New York City in 1959. In her pre-writer life, she worked as a foreign language teacher, management development specialist, and fragrance/cosmetics executive. Gabriella is a strong advocate of the arts, of multiculturalism, and of social justice—a passion inspired by reading Dickens and Dante at a very young age. She has been an active volunteer with Dress for Success for over eight years and is a member of the Slow Food NYC Food and Farm Policy Task Force. She lives on the Upper West Side with her husband, her daughter, her mom, and a furry Shih–Tzu named Oreo. ‘ The Artisan’s Star’ is her first novel. She is currently working on a collection of short stories, also set in Italy, and a screenplay.
Connect with Gabriella on: Website│Twitter│Amazon Author Page│Facebook
Giveaway:
5 winners will each receive one print or ebook copy of The Artisan's Star, a $10 Amazon gift card and a perfume sample. (Open to USA & Canada) Ends May 16. So good luck!
5 winners will each receive one print or ebook copy of The Artisan's Star, a $10 Amazon gift card and a perfume sample. (Open to USA & Canada) Ends May 16. So good luck!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your feedback!