A Novelist Visits Milan, Siena, Glasgow, Lugano, Lisbon & Beijing
The exquisite taste of Sarah Blakley-Cartwright!!
The novelist Sarah Blakley-Cartwright sweeps into rooms. She is warmth itself, and often I feel totally enveloped. Maybe it’s the lipstick, but the word that comes to mind is vibrant. She is also somehow deeply cool? Not only did she have a role as a hot high schooler in Thirteen (2003), but her baby’s name is Swan.
The actress Chloë Sevigny read the audiobook for her novel, Alice Sadie Celine. The novel was based around an extremely spicy idea: What would happen if my mother had an affair with my best friend? (Sevigny also blurbed the book, “Obsessed.” And then Busy Philipps blurbed it, “I am literally obsessed.” Clearly, only actresses should be allowed to blurb books.) Sarah’s next novel is firmly underway, but I’m not allowed to say more than that!
Sarah has been all over the world and back. Here are her favorite spots in Milan, Siena, Glasgow, Lugano, Lisbon and Beijing.
Vera Persiani, Milan
This shop, slinging slip-style nightgowns in mulberry and charmeuse silk, trimmed with eyelash lace, is for all those mourning the fall of Peress. Come on down. You’ll never see such blues and purples, the liquid sheen as the fabric drapes like water. If Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi hadn’t decided in Summertime that it was “better to leave a party before it ends,” this is what she would have worn on the ocean-liner honeymoon. Opt for the peignoir set, a floor-length gown with an accompanying bed jacket finished with cap and sleeves and mother-of-pearl buttons. Feels like a glass of champagne. Instagram here.
Liugou Tofu Village, Beijing
Take the 919 bus from Beijing. You’ll pass donkeys and camels on the shrubby, arid natural land passage four hours through the mountains into the ancient rural village of Liugou. The public bus transfer wasn’t running the day I went, so you may have to hitchhike from the mountain station. The Communist flag over the courtyard gate signals you’ve arrived. Each of the village’s hundred houses is numbered, but out of order. Each of the hundred houses has a small guest room, should a visitor wish to stay overnight.
I learned that people have allegiance to one or another house, but I’d advise coming down in favor of one by instinct. Call out past the hanging curtains and you’ll be seated, then presented with a steaming cup of soybean curd milk, followed by twenty-five tofu dishes arrayed around an earthenware hotpot filled with vermicelli noodles and cabbage, slow cooking over a charcoal stove. Numerology is important here: there are three pots, six bowls, four seasons. Don’t try to keep track, just enjoy the black bean curd and the mung bean curd, good for the kidneys and preventing sunstroke. The final bill for the feast is 4USD.
