by Tim Parks
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Product Description
Tim Parks’s best seller, Italian Neighbors, offered a sparkling, witty, and acutely observed account of an expatriate’s life in a small village outside of Verona. Now in An Italian Education, Parks continues his chronicle of adapting to Italian society and culture, while raising his Italian-born children. With the exquisite eye for detail, character, and intrigue that has brought him acclaim as a novelist, Parks creates an enchanting portrait of Italian parenthood and family life at home, in the classroom, and at church. Shifting from hilarity to despair in the time it takes to sing a lullaby, Parks learns that to be a true Italian, one must live by the motto “All days are one.”
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Worth Reading Again, 2008-07-24
I recently reread this delightful book and enjoyed it all over again. It was one of the first memoirs about Italy I read, but it has held its appeal. It is unique in that it is from an involved father's perspective--less romantic than others and more realistic. While it's lovely to swoon over the glowing descriptions of Tuscany from the patio of the finally restored abode, drinking homemade wine, it's also great to get the nitty-gritty of day-to-day life in the city. Tim Parks's slightly acerbic view is funny and down to earth and gives a crystal clear eyed interpretation of Italian life from an Englishman's perspective that makes you feel right at home there. Well worth the read, and reread.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Raising kids in Italy from a father's point of view, 2008-06-25
This book was required reading for an Italian Culture course I'm taking. What wisdom my professor has shown in assigning this book! In addition to gaining valuable insight into contemporary Italian culture, I was also very moved by this story of an Englishman raising his half-Italian children in Italy. He observes how Italian his children are and how early they recognize that he is not one of them. He explores such features of Italian culture as Mother Worship (Mammismo) and the curious fact that this most Catholic country of Europe also has Western Europe's lowest birth rate. All Italians talk about the "sacrifice" of having children. To have more than one child is madness from their point of view because Italian children must have the best everything for the entire lives of their parents. The parents "sacrifice" so that their children can have the best schools, the best toys, the best clothing. The parents pretty much support them their entire lives, even buying their houses for them when they finally leave home and marry. He sees the blatant sexism of the Italian culture wherein gender roles are inculcated into the children from the cradle. The Italians see something wrong with his giving his son piano lessons and letting his daughter participate in "boys'" activities. (There is also a certain schadenfreude at a someone's having no male offspring, especially if that someone is your landlord.) But he endures it all good-humoredly and takes great delight in watching his children grow up "Italian." He takes them on walks and bike rides where they discover shrines to forgotten saints in the middle of the wilderness. He takes them to the beach where the kids get an unexpected introduction to the facts of life when they come upon the lifeguard and his girlfriend in flagrante delicto behind some rocks. The book is very funny as well as insightful. I laughed many times throughout the book and was unexpectedly moved in the oddest places, such as when their children find out that it's really their parents who bring their Christmas presents and not "Santa Lucia," the local version of Santa Claus.
But the real star of the book is gloriously beautiful and ageless Italy, so gorgeous you just want to gasp. I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone who is a parent and/or loves Italy. Four and a half stars rounded up to five.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
An Italian Education, 2008-01-21
This is the second time I've purchased this book. I enjoyed it so much (along with the sequel, Italian Neighbors) that I loaned it to my friends and it was never returned. An entertaining account of the experience of marrying into an Italian family, with all its internecine conflicts and quirks, and moving to Italy with all its governmental and religious idiosyncrasies. Well written and funny. It doesn't take an Italian to recognize the eternal struggle to find a place in a strange society....and the Italians can be very strange.
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