Italian Days

• Paperback - October, 1998 - Atlantic Monthly Press
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• By: Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
• ISBN: 0871137275

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Reviews by readers

You Can't Go Home Again

The first two-thirds of this book is a superb travel guide to Milan, Venice, Rome, and Campania. Barbara Grizzuti Harrison is very conversant with the best travel literature of the past (and thoughtfully provides us a useful bibliography) and -- more rare by far -- has a great deal to add as an Italian-American confronting the land of her birth.

After her chapter on Naples and Campania, the book takes an entirely different tack. The author goes to visit what remains of her family in rural Molise and Calabria. Big mistake. You can't mix pleasure with unfinished family business and expect to get anything other than heartsick.

I remember taking a visit to Hungary and Slovakia to visit my relatives some years ago. Their reaction: Why haven't you visited us before? Why aren't you staying longer? When are you coming back? Let us introduce you to your third and fourth cousins! It was interesting, at times even exhilarating, but it was no vacation. And you need a vacation from your vacation when you return.

Although Harrison's family visits break her book in two, it conveys a sense of truth missing from most books of the sort -- especially of the nefarious Tuscan villa genre. Our ancestors left their homes for a reason. They may not tell you the reason; but those left behind nursing their grudges will gladly set you straight -- possibly to your intense discomfiture.

So in the end, I have nothing but praise for this book. Especially if you are an Italian-American going back to the "Old Country" for a first visit, you must read this book. Like the author, take your vacation first -- then go face the music with your relatives.

Let the sun set on these "days."

This book came very highly recommended, and I have to admit, I was disappointed. I found it self-absorbed and opaque, inscrutable. Grizzuti Harrison's Italy sounds like a place I would never want to go -- indeed, nothing like the place I've been to -- full of peevish storekeepers, American-hating townspeople, predatory men. I found nothing to love about the Italy depicted in this book and couldn't imagine why the author would subject herself to further months spent there.

The writing is very strange. The sentence structure loops archaically, and the asides that are often inserted into the sentences not only make the reading more difficult, but do nothing to enlighten the reader.

I also took issue with the book's tone and diction. Grizzuti Harrison spends pages and pages on high-flown quotations -- so many that it seems like she's padding her book because she has no thoughts of her own -- yet brings the reader crashing down from these utterances with a few strangely-placed "f-words."

I didn't understand this book. I prefer my own memories of Italy to this author's.

Worst travel book I have ever read

I've never been promt to write a review until I read this book. I have read 79 travel and historical books on Europe, 36 on Italy. This is the only one I've disliked. I would give it zero stars but that isn't an option.

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