NOTES FROM AN ITALIAN GARDEN

"I will always be happy that we found the area when we did, in 1964, while it was still an unknown backwater, for we were able to catch—just before it began to disappear—a way of life that had gone on virtually unchanged since the Dark Ages, and sometimes much longer." The author, an American living in Italy, reminisces about her life in Canale, a village north of Rome in Etruria, the land of the ancient Etruscans (into whose history—particularly their age-old passions for horse racing, mushrooms and eels—she frequently delves). Marble recounts how her carefully thought-out plans for the garden yielded to the more expedient solution of an overbearing bulldozer operator, tells how she arrived at the perfect design for her greenhouse, muses about the problems of getting seeds to germinate and describes other Italian gardens that have intrigued her, including an overly ostentatious project that got revenge on its owner by self-destructing during a prolonged cold spell. Anecdotes about the locals, standard fare in this type of memoir, include a tale about her maid, who decided not to get married because the prospective groom's new house lacked an adequate bathroom, and a saga of tomb robbers who tried to draw her husband into their illicit activities. It all adds up to a book that is pleasant and sometimes amusing but not original enough to stand out in a market saturated with similar offerings. Line drawings by Corinna Sargood. Author tour to Boston, New York and Washington, D.C. (May 8)