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By Tim Parks
Published by Vintage Books
As an Italian who has been living in the UK for several years I have developed an ambiguous relationship with my home country: I have little praise for Italy but will defend it with fervent national pride if foreigners say anything negative about it. Unless the negativity is aimed at the current leadership of the country… but that’s another story.
So, when I decided to read Tim Parks’s Italian Neighbours – An Englishmen in Verona as part of the Italy in Books reading challenge 2011, I thought that I’d have to sigh and tut frequently at all the clichés I was sure to find. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I grinned, I chuckled, I laughed out loud and not one single frown crossed my face.
In Italian Neighbours we follow the writer and his wife during the difficult months of being the new people in town, which in this case is an Italian village nestled among the hills of the beautiful Veneto region. A witty and inquisitive observer, Parks’s descriptions of people and places are a pleasure to read and wonderfully evocative.
The characters that populate the pages of this book – from the local greengrocer to the lady who every morning sweeps the street in front of her house with a twig broom – are vividly portrayed. They are not caricatures but I am sure that anyone who grew up in a village with strong ties to its rural past will know someone just like that. I know I do!
Tim Parks does not offer an idyllic picture of Italy but certainly an endearing one, even when talking about potentially inflammatory topics such as public sector employees, taxes and private healthcare, which, in a different kind of book, would be at the centre of heated discussions.
A sort of survival manual, Italian Neighbours is an excellent read for both people who don’t know the country that well and for those who think they know it inside out.
The only time my life in Italy seems to come close to the usual images most people have of it is in the summer. Though I spend most summers away – my teaching work ends for the season and I usually go to the US to visit my family – I still carry the memories of the summers I've spent in Italy. One memory in particular stands out:
One a.m. on a mid-summer night. I lay sprawled atop the bed, alone. My husband was asleep in our other bedroom because his proximity in our bed seemed to increase the temperature of the room. The heat was too intense, the fan blowing on me providing precious little relief from the all-enveloping warmth. The zanzare – the mosquitoes – tormented me, buzzing past my ears whenever sleep beckoned, alighting on my too-sensitive, exposed skin until I was forced to take shelter beneath a bed sheet in spite of the heat.
Facing toward the wide-open window, desperate for some sort of breeze, I found myself distracted anew. A bright light shone in my direction in spite of the late hour, coming and going – not only flickering, but interrupted regularly enough to be noticeable. The light originated from a flat two buildings over, catty-cornered to my own. In the middle of such a restless night, it was more than enough to keep me awake. Without my glasses, I opened my eyes and squinted into the light as it came and went yet again.
With my imperfect vision, I could barely make out the shape of someone on their balcony, moving to and fro. Curious in spite of myself, I sat up and squinted harder, trying to see what they were doing. It seemed that they were doing chores – mopping floors or ironing clothes – and passing in front of the television from time to time. That seemed to explain everything.
And still, I was even more curious. I got my glasses and put them on, then turned to watch my neighbor once more. Now that I saw clearly, I spied a middle-aged woman, clad only in her bra and a gauzy slip, ironing clothes on her balcony. The light from the television would be blocked when she passed in front of it to hang the freshly-ironed clothes up on the edge of the living-room door frame. Sometimes she folded them and stacked them neatly on her sofa, always passing in front the television, always blocking the light for a brief moment as she did so.
I was both embarrassed at having seen her in such a state of undress – I am American, after all, and such things are not the norm where I'm from – and pleasantly surprised by her cleverness. Of course, she probably didn't expect that anyone would see her there, and she was just doing what she needed to do to get that unpleasant chore done.
Still, I admired her ingenuity. What better time was there to do the ironing, anyway? It was a chore I hated with a passion, because of the heat and the sweating and discomfort it brought me. Maybe it was the same for her, too? At any rate, I knew I'd probably never be able to do that. The idea might occur to me, but I doubted that I'd have the nerve to go through with it. I'm too reticent, too shy and frankly, too insecure about my physical appearance to risk being seen that way.
I made a point of lying down again, taking off my glasses and trying to sleep. The effort was futile for some time. It wasn't until she was done, the clothes ironed and the television and lights of her flat switched off, that I was able to find something close to slumber. The middle hours of the night passed, cooled slightly, and then around four-thirty a.m., the birds began to sing and the sky started to lighten.
A slight breeze blew through my flat, making the air from the oscillating fan seem a degree or two cooler as the mosquitoes ceased their fly-bys. I drifted off to sleep at last.
One more title from my ever-expanding reading wish list.
** The cover image is for illustrative purposes only. If you are a publisher and would kindly like to offer me a copy of this book for review, I will change the cover so as to reflect the edition received. **
The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy
By Rachel Cusk
Amazon's product description: When prize-winning author Rachel Cusk decides to travel to Italy for a summer with her husband and two young children she has no idea of the trials and wonders that lie in store. Their journey leads them to both the expected – the Piero della Francesca trail and queues at the Vatican – and the surprising – an amorous Scottish ex-pat and a longing for home – all seen through Cusk’s sharp and humane perspective. Exploring the desire to travel and to escape, art and its inspirations, beauty and ugliness, and the challenge of balancing domestic life with creativity, The Last Supper is a wonderful travel book about life on the most famous art trail in the world, from one of Britain’s most pre-eminent writers.
Why I want to read this book: I'm always interested in seeing my country through the eyes of foreigners, even in writing.
By Tim Parks
