Adultery and Other Diversions [Import] [Hardcover]

Tim Parks (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 190 pages
• Publisher: New York: Arcade,; 1st ed edition (1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0436274892
• ISBN-13: 978-0436274893
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a sassicaia 85 type of a book, complex ,sensual,has breed., July 14, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (berkeley,california) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adultery and Other Diversions (Hardcover)

This is the third book of the author I have read.I run into the Italian Education accidentally,while perusing through the travel section in a bookstore. Later I have read the Italian Neighbours. I recommend these books higly especially for those who are interested in Italian society and who thought that Francis Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun was a tasteless joke. This last book by Parks which comprises of a set of essays strengthened my conviction that,when it comes to making observations and passing judgments on contemporary institutions and social norms he is as insightful and original as anybody, perhaps he is a modern day Tocqueville. These seemingly disparate essays are held together by some common themes:limits of rationality in guiding behavior,arbitrary nature of language,critique of the historical unlearning process which is underway,etc. What is particularly noteworhy in the author's reasoning is that he can start out with a convention or an assumption that reasonable minds will agree(such as "being charitable is a good thing"),then he debunks the widely held conventions by attacking their inner contradictions before(sometimes)reaching a moral conclusion. Fortunately he does this without a dash of pedanticism and with irony and sincere self-examination. The book also becomes a lot of fun to read under the Campania sun when Parks delivers a beautifully crafted personal attack against a literary"giant" and you understand that the man must have been a force to reckon with when he played football(Soccer)in his youth.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Oh how disappointing, August 30, 2000

By A Customer

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This review is from: Adultery and Other Diversions (Paperback)

Having lived in Italy for over 20 yers I am a great fan of Tim Parks. Italian Neighbors, are my neighbors. Down to the barking dog you plan to kill on the first moonless night. Italian Eucation is the story of my beach and my beach club. Down to the juke box mother! Adultery is just such a disappointment. None of the humor. None of laughing outloud. Just dull and overly trying too hard to impress. I have to say I disliked every word of this book. Not vintage Parks

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but too breezy, blithe, January 12, 2000

By 

Jerome Alvin (Ottawa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adultery and Other Diversions (Hardcover)

The English have a tradition of great essayists but modern practitioners such as Parks and Theroux do not have the scope or weight of their predecessors.

Parks is clever and he never rambles on. But his subjects--adultery, cleaning his daughter's room, the transforming power of language expressed in a hike--do not carry the weight of an Eliot or Orwell essay. Maybe that's because most of Parks's pieces appeared in the New Yorker, which has pared back noticeably the length of essays it publishes.

You may find that the essays do not compell repeated readings as, say, Eliot's and Orwell's do.