Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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68 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Real every-day Italian culture unveiled, 6 Jun 2001
By A Customer
This book, like "An Italian Education" by the same author, makes a compulsory reading for who really wants to know about Italian culture and I don't mean how they cook, how they dress or how they play football. Tim Parks has lived for twenty years in the town where I was born and I have to admit that it took an Englishman to pinpoint the every-day Italian characteristics and ways of living. For me it was a bit of a revelation because I never thought all the idiosincrasies, manias and madness of Italian society were anything to write about, but then a friend at work told me there was a guy who lived in Verona who wrote a book... and here I am, reviewing it. The book is brillant, thoroughly enjoyable, it is always witty, hilarious and critical at the same time, it makes such an entertaining reading. One breezes through the chapters. I could see myself, my family and friends in them and this is the way we are over there, this is so spot-on! The author got it so right! I think this book is very special because Tim Parks understood the culture of the place where he lives writing a couple of superbly entertaining books about it in the meanwhile.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Accurate, Amusing and Perceptive, 28 Nov 2000
After years of despairing over writers who do zero research before setting a book in Italy, over authors that don't even bother to check the spelling of the words they put into their Italian characters' mouths (Mario Puzo is one hilarious example), I have finally come across this terrific book.Tim Parks has truly lived here. He has had a good look around and understood what he has seen- I have never read such an accurate book on Italian society and mores as seen from a foreigner's point of view. As the previous reviewer has noted, this is NOT a travel book: the author prefers to describe it as "an arrival book". It is a humourous and charming study of Italian culture by a writer who has chosen to make his home here. Be warned though. Parks uses a LOT of Italian terms and phrases and this is probably unavoidable. His characters would sound stilted otherwise. The down side is that if you are not quite familiar with the Italian language this book could be a bit trying on your patience as a reader. To be fair though, one must add that it's nothing a good dictionary couldn't fix and that it's well worth persevering.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Neighbours AND family, 20 Jun 2003
As well as the delightful descriptions of customs that are culturally different, belonging to a different pace of life, there is more. It takes a brave man to tackle the subject of foreign in-laws, and Tim Parks does it with humour and patience. The parents-in-law who arrive and leave with no warning, make promises to their grandchildren that are not kept, who maintain a protective attitude towards grown-up sons, the expectations of loving greetings and being thanked profusely as this is the real reward for small gifts. This is a different culture for Tim Parks, where his children learn to take things for granted that their foreign father finds strange, but by observing and often bridging the gap between the generations he learns to understand, and to accept. A fascinating view of the complicated relationships in a family, where the foreigner always reminds himself that HE is the different element, and adapts. An eye-opening read for the increasing group of people who through intercultural / international marriage find themselves lost in a strange web, and also a good idea for ANY person dealing with in-laws, even if they share the same nationality, because the culture is always different.
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