I have to admit that I was quite suspicious of this book. I thought, "ok, this is gonna be one of those boring and predictable accounts of the dark side of Italy blah blah". I was wrong. It's true, Mr. Parks has sometimes quite a posh attitude towards the people (with their "unaccountable" ways of living and thinking) whom he met upon his arrival in the small village of Montecchio (Veneto) in the early 1990s. But Parks is also a very sharp observer and this is nothing but an extremely clever and enjoyable book.
...Continuanow that's an issue I relate to. And this has nothing to do with the usual American menopausal hags who move to a deeeliiiiicious cottage in unspoilt Tuscany and fancy the local plumber. Tim Parks describes life amongst these aliens, the Italians, exactly as it is, good and bad, perplexing habits (which we find perfectly normal) and advantages over the British way of life (which we find perfectly normal too). I giggled often. I then laughed out loud reading AN ITALIAN EDUCATION, about how he grew up his bilingual, bicultural kids (at the passage about the perils of buying a family house in Italy).
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