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Italian Neighbours: An Englishman in Verona
by: Tim Parks

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 945.34
EAN: 9780099286950
ISBN: 0099286955
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Pages: 327
Publication Date: May 03, 2001
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage
Sales Rank: 74313

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Tries to be realistic, but is sometimes just cynical
Tim Parks has a habit of writing on subjects I'm fascinated by - Italy, football, education - so it's a bit odd that I tend to find his books hard-going and uninspiring. A Season in Verona seemed to me the work of a man who had no real enthusiasm for football, and Italian Neighbours reads like the diatribe of a bitter foreigner against a Veneto suburb and its inhabitants.

I believe Parks is trying to write an antidote to those travel books that come over all misty-eyed about sunsets in Tuscany, and so on - and I'm all for that. But there's no balance here: the book goes into considerable detail (it is 30-40% overlong) about the numerous petty annoyances of life in Italy, but has very little to say about what makes the Veneto, or ... Read More:

Rating:

- Finely observed vignettes of Italian life
This is an incredibly well-written book. Let's state right from the outset that this isn't even remotely a tourist guide, but if you know Italian life off the tourist beat just a little, you'll find yourself recognising characters, situations and attitudes to life you might have come across.

Yes, there are areas that won't appeal to English sensibilities. But it shouldn't come as a surprise to discover that when you cross the Channel, you'll find cultural differences that may disturb or even repel you. And so it is in Italy. The fact that these differences exist and Tim Parks chronicals them without an overlay of sentimentality or sensationalism makes them at the same time more shocking - but also more understandable.

I'm ... Read More:

Rating:

- Horrible book
The book offers cruel portraits of the author's neighobours and friends.
It's not funny and the informative bits about Italian lifestyle and habits
are scattered among long tedious trivial chapters.

Rating:

- Neighbours AND family
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 ... Read More:

Rating:

- Living in an Italian town
I thoroughly enjoyed reading his book, it is always nice to know how foreigners see you! Tim Parks is a good observer and gives you plenty of details on his surprise at some of the Italian ways.
Things have changed a bit, though, as the book was written some 15 years ago and we changed a lot in politics and way of living, even if the typical characters are still there (my aunt is obsessed with cleaning the house and keeping it perfect, some people I know are "car worshippers" and so on). Some of the differences may be due to the fact that I live in Piedmont and not in Veneto and there is a big difference, not as big as between the North and the South, but still sensible. I guess this is one of the reasons that made me so curious about the book. ... Read More:

Books : Italian Neighbours: An Englishman in Verona