Italian Neighbors

• Paperback - September, 2003 - Grove Press
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• By: Tim Parks
• ISBN: 0802140343

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Reviews by readers

Helps you better understand the culture

This author lived it . . . and writes about it so well. I read this book after a trip to Italy. I wish I read it earlier. It makes my experiences traveling more relevant. I highly recommend it.

Captures the Incongruities of Italian Life

Even after having lived in Italy, I remained puzzled by some of my Italian Aunt's eccentricities. For instance, she would stop to pick bitter herbs she saw growing from about anywhere and would be seemingly unaware that this constituted bizarre behavior in America. Reading about how a character in the book named Lucilla would stop to do the same brought pleasant memories back and made it clear to me my Aunt's behavior was really about the incongruities of Italian life. The chapter entitled Discreto, Valido, Relativo best captures these incongruities.

Tim Parks does not describe an idyllic Italian paradise. He captures the beauty, and even some of the warts, of everyday life near Verona. His focus is not on restoration of a country home and learning to cook like a native, but on real life. His insights into Italian politics, baffling bureaucratic behavior, and combative neighbors are fascinating and are conveyed with a lightheartedness this subject merits.

Parks does occasionally show his political colors taking swipes at Margaret Thatcher (the book was written a while back) and showing an affinity for the Green movement. At least for me, those sorts of references are somewhat of a detour to the story that blurred the author's focus.

Too similar to other books

I think I've over-dosed on the "Briton living abroad" sub-genre of the memoir. The flow of the text seemed to get stuck so often when Parks would go out of his way to point out how different he found Italian culture. I found it quite tiresome after awhile.

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