NONFICTION - May 29, 1994

A VALLEY IN ITALY: The Many Seasons of a Villa in Umbria by Lisa St. Aubin De Teran. (HarperCollins: $21; 224 pp.) One of the grand difficulties accompanying books about people who find the perfect fixer-upper villa in some gorgeous, flavorful but not too remote part of the world is that you must hate them with all your heart. The other, more interesting problem is: How they fit into the culture they invade and admire? What do they give back? Are their observations evidence that they travel with their own culture and experience keeping them afloat and apart like water wings? Or are they porous and dignified in their differentness? Having heaped so many caveats on these obnoxious pilgrims, let me now say that Lisa St. Aubin de Teran gets it right. Sure, she’s a bit of a poseur, “instructed in the art of buying houses by Ted Hughes, our Poet Laureate, who explained to me that first I should find the house I wanted and then I should buy it, and only later worry about how to pay for it,” and in our American culture delusions of grandeur, visions of loggias and balustrades and cantilevered thises and thats can be off-putting. You’re supposed to know your place and what you can afford and keep your ego in check. Lisa St. Aubin de Teran takes her two children; 6-year-boy Allie, and 15-year-old future super-model “the child Iseult” with her to set up house in the Villa Orsola in the little village of San Orsela in the Umbrian hills. Her Scottish painter husband comes later. She has patience and imagination and a wonderful sense of humor. She has a kind of courage and equanimity and her observations of her own cast of characters is gracious and generous and respectful. After visiting this long with her, it was hard to leave--a compliment to any hostess (or writer).