15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
love it..., August 25, 2009
This review is from: Halfway to Each Other: How a Year in Italy Brought Our Family Home (Hardcover)
This book is about faith, love and the struggles a family endures to really be together... The courageous decision Susan and Tim made when they felt they were at the end of their marriage was stunning! The honesty, humor, and deep reflection shown in her writing made me wish to know this woman better. One favorite part was when they get off a train at the wrong station in Italy with their fourteen red suitcases. I laughed out loud!
It makes me long to grab my family and run away to Europe. Read it, you will love it!
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amateur Book Review by Maria of Maria's Space, August 23, 2009
This review is from: Halfway to Each Other: How a Year in Italy Brought Our Family Home (Hardcover)
This is a true story about Susan and her 6'5" husband Jim who were on the brink of separation. Susan has felt empty, lonely and disillusioned for years. Just as she is about to break the news to her husband on the last day of a business trip in Italy, he says that he thinks
it would be amazing to live there.
Two months later their, house is sold, their belongings are in storage and they are heading to Italy.
They lease an apartment, find the kids a school, learn to speak Italian, make friends immediately and find out that sometimes less is more.
Susan and her husband notice the changes in the children quickly. With no TV, radio, cell phones, computers and friends, the start looking for each other to talk, play cards and play together. Susan and her husband, spend their days, cooking, shopping, playing and riding a Vespa around Italy.
Susan's new friend's show them that just being, singing with abandon, dancing, sharing a glass of wine and spending time together are what matters. She starts to look at what really matters, Tim, and her two children. She finds out that living the unexpected life in Italy was like "finding the fountain of youth."
I highly recommend this book. Most marriages suffer after years. We feel unfulfilled, unloved, unmotivated, uninspired and we blame the person we are with. Susan took the opportunity to realize that she was blaming her husband Tim for this "lost part of her soul." We all feel lost at times; Husbands, wives, kids all of us. It isn't the fault of the person we are with, it is how we process what is around us or how we let our surroundings affect us.
Susan says that at the end of our lives we will be asked to answer two questions. Did we live fully? Did I love well? Can we all answer this positively? Probably not. This is something we should all aspire to.
I had to laugh over some of the arguments Susan and Tim have. He makes a joke, she tries to joke back but he takes it as a personal attack and vice versa. It is my relationship with my husband exactly. "Little moments that create canyons between us." Susan puts into words what most of us will never be able to do.
Thank goodness Susan and Tim took this year off to re-evaluate and find their way back to each other. In the long run, family is what matters.
At the end of this book, I had to ask myself, could my husband and I survive no television, no jobs, kids at school, no phone, no friends? I highly doubt it!
In A Nutshell: You will not regret buying this book. It is a fantastic book and I am so honored to have had the opportunity to read it. [...]
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
On the fence with this one., September 7, 2009
This review is from: Halfway to Each Other: How a Year in Italy Brought Our Family Home (Hardcover)
This book has all the makings of a tv "reality" show. Take a blonde, Los Angeles soccer mom, her 2 children and her "highly successful" husband and suddenly place them in a small Italian town to fend for themselves for a year.
Well, almost. In truth, the author and her husband had been to Italy before. They hosted a 6-day business trip in Florence and Portofino for about 40 of the husband's clients. Evidently the couple never rode a bus while there, or shopped in a grocery store, or learned more than a handful of Italian words. Because when they actually moved to Italy, they had no clue. Their naivete was astonishing. For example, they were surprised, on a visit to the local grocery store, that it did not carry things like Oreos, Cheetos, Chef Boyardee, and Fruit Roll-Ups. When invited to a dinner party, and served tongue (lingua), the husband asks, "What kind of animal is a lingua?" Though trying their best, they often came off (at least in the beginning) as culturally insensitive, sometimes bordering on "ugly American". If nothing else, this book could serve as a cautionary tale of how NOT to set up house in another country without doing your homework first.
Be aware, also, that this is an "inspirational" book - meaning that the author has chosen to quote Gospel verse throughout.
Yet having said all this, I read this book through to the end. And I actually enjoyed it. This family had a lot of guts. The author was always up-front and honest about her family's difficulties adjusting to life abroad, and about her relationship with her husband. They were good natured, open to new adventures, and often funny. You couldn't help but wish them well.
Equally irritating and charming - a worthy first effort by this author.
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