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A Season with Verona
by: Tim Parks

List Price: £8.99

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Used Price: £1.37
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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780099422679
ISBN: 0099422670
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: March 06, 2003
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage
Sales Rank: 42915

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
For the last few months Anglo-Italian novelist Tim Parks has been writing of his devotion to Italian football club Hellas Verona in The Guardian. In A Season with Verona we get a chance to read the full and absorbing narrative that lay behind those short snippets.

In some ways the book is a standard travelogue. In following his lowly Series A team in their seasonal slog around Italy, Parks gets to visit all the famous sights and cities. What makes this journey so different and so interesting is that Parks is accompanied by vividly ordinary, honestly working-class, determinedly urban Italians and gets to share their Nick Hornbyish highs and lows. This in turn provides a credible, fresh and revealing insight into the Italian character. These fans do all the normal soccer-supporter things like fight, drink, despair, exult, rant and put each other in comas; but they also do more surprising things, like sing songs in praise of the murderous Liverpool fans of Heysel and give voice to racist feelings about their southern compatriots.

This may not sound like most people's image of southern loveliness. Indeed it isn't. But it is a much needed antidote to all that saccharine-sweet Under The Tuscan Sun stuff; and it also makes this book a splendid bedside companion to the Italian campaign in the next, or indeed any, World Cup. --Sean Thomas

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Brilliant
Wow, I don't think Tim Parks could have chosen a better season to follow Verona. If he hadn't written the book, it would still be a great story to tell. I'm not going to spoil the ending for everyone, but it really is an amazing season which ends spectacularly.

I love the fact that the author actually attends the games as a true spectator instead of press or pundit. He joins in with the chants, the drinking, the travelling - all as a die hard fan and he never hides any of the gory details of Italian football.

There's a few other books like this and this one stands out a mile because you actually know the author is educated with regards to football and is a true fan, as opposed to some other authors who have a blinkered ... Read More:

Rating:

- Parks Plays A Blinder!
This is a must for all literary football fans, following one of Italian soccer's less fashionable, and decidedly right wing, clubs Hellas Verona during the ill-fated season when they were last in Serie A. Like his previous books, Italian Neighbours and An Italian Education, Parks really delves deep into the psyche and delivers prose with all the colour and vivaciousness of a carnival parade. The noise, the sights, even the smells and tastes of top-drawer Italian football leap from virtually every page and the real emotion which simmers eternally can be sensed as it reaches its inevitable, sometimes violent, crescendo.
The Englishman abroad style of book has often been criticized, sometimes quite rightly so, for its over prosaic, condescending ... Read More:

Rating:

- Per sempre Gialloblu!
I won't bore you with my loquacious opinion on this magnificent book (other people have done that probably better than I can among these readers' reviews). No, I will simply tell you the truth.

When I finished reading the book in May 2003, I booked a flight to Verona and a hotel near l'Arena, and went to the stadium for the last game of that season (Bari, 1-1, for the statiticians among you). I had to see la Curva Sud for myself. Since then, having made friends with one or two members of I Piu Mati (ciao Christian, ciao Alberto, ciao Fabio!) I've been back several times (including a memorable 5-3 win over rivals Vicenza [di merda!]) and they've even been over to see my humble bunch of sleeping giants (the West Country's top team, Bristol ... Read More:

Rating:

- Classic Writing
Ask on any website message board that has anything to do with football what are the best football books and this comes up every time.

Following the unglamourous Serie A side Hellas Verona home and away through the whole Italian season, the book describes more than just the mechanics of the game, but rather the emotion and etheral stuff, the relationship between fans and team, rival fans, and indeed indiviuduals within the social group of Hellas' hardcore fans. Indeed if it is match by match 'stats' commentary you want this is nt the book, but if it is the description and analysis of the word of fotball fandom then this is it. The subtext to the football is Italy and Italian culture and this is both interesting, funny, scary and head scratching ... Read More:

Rating:

- Forza Verona!
I had read about this book when it first came out and was interested, but it took me five years to get round to buying it. What an idiot I was!

The idea is fantastic - to follow a side across the country to every league game. Parks is true to his word and makes it to every game, taking the reader from Sicily to Udine and to the Stadio Olimpico and the Delle Alpi.

The book is superbly written. The author is a real fan and the emotions and frustration that he feels are ones with which the reader can instantly empathise.

I don't want to spoil any surprises, but the first chapter is possibly the best in the book and the away trip to Napoli is also memorable (not least for Gabriella on the train - I hope she has read it!). ... Read More:

Books : A Season with Verona