Customer Reviews

Halfway to Each Other: How a Year in Italy Brought Our Family Home

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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!

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. [...]

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.

I loved every page of Halfway to Each Other. I enjoyed Susan's engaging writing style, which allowed me to share her journey through a crisis in her marriage and her family's sabbatical in Italy. The entry she wrote about seeing her grandmother in a field of flowers--flowers which reminded her of her grandmother's favorite hat--really spoke to me and brought back memories of my beloved *MeeMaw.* Such lovely and insightful writing.

The test of a really really good book is that it's one you're eager to share with others. To date, I've given the book to three family members and have it on my gift list to give to friends this Christmas. I was lucky enough to have happened across this jewel and look forward to sharing it with others this holiday season. Thank you, Susan, for sharing your journey.

This is a a beautifully written, honest book about one family and two simultaneous journeys. The first is the obvious one. Let's go live in Italy for a year. Naive? Yes. Brave? Absolutely. Kudos for the effort and honesty about their cultural stumbling. On this journey, they fulfilled many people's "if only..." dreams.

The second journey is the more delicate, subtle, and difficult; it's a journey of self-discovery that most people are terrified to take. This journey takes great courage to pack for and even more courage to write about. Who wants to write about those stupid little fights that every marriage experiences? No one wants to even remember them because no one ever comes out looking patient, kind, wise, or even adult. Susan writes with brave heart and pen to share and, yes, inspire others whom she knows are making the same stumbling mistakes, just in Iowa instead of Italy.

It does take a brave and open heart to move your entire family to a foreign land, especially a family with teenagers. However, I know from personal experience that Susan and Tim gave their children a priceless gift. They saved their marriage and allowed their children to become members of the international community of the world. Not bad for one brief year. Susan, I applaud you and thank you for sharing both of these unmatched and unique journeys. I hope many readers choose to be both entertained, educated and inspired by your story. And maybe some will decide to move to far away lands. It's a big world and worth the effort.

This is a delightful and worthwhile read.

For the past couple of years I've been smitten with the books "A Year by the Sea" (Joan Anderson) and "Eat, Pray, Love" (Elizabeth Gilbert) for the guts it took both women to walk away from everything and start their lives over. Having just turned 50 I loved reading their memoirs and loved living through their lives and decisions vicariously. However, happily married, not until "Halfway to Each Other" did it even occur to me that you didn't have to run away from your family to enter in to the novelty of a new life! You could accomplish the same type of "get-away," with your family! I'm doing a new type of thinking and dreaming after this book!

Even though HALFWAY TO EACH OTHER is definitely "chick-lit," this macho dude thoroughly enjoyed it.

I found Susan Pohlman's memoir of her family's year's sabbatical on the Italian Riviera to be profound, intelligent, brave, beautiful, poetic, moving and very funny. I would judge it far superior to UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN. Though it has many messages, one that comes home to me as a husband and father is how important--really all-important--intimate family relationships are, relationships which can only be built by sharing time together.

Given her literary gifts and insights into people, Susan Pohlman is someone to watch as her writing career flowers. I'd love to see her try her hand at a novel.

Having lived in Italy for over 4 years, I found this book very true to the Italian life - for better or worse! It was real, it was honest and it was a joy to read. I would highly recommend this to anyone who has ever had the dream to live in a foreign country. Susan Pohlman has a beautiful story that she tells with humor and love for her family and her country and Italy.

A fantastic book on SAVING a marriage! Wonderful tales of learning to live in Italy and very down to earth with the details. Enjoyed the travels, and sure am wishing my hubby and I could do the same someday! Wonderful writing and just enough length to each chapter and some very hilarious encounters!

I am enjoying this book SO much. I feel like I am a part of their family and experiencing Italy right along with them. I bought this for my Kindle but I almost got it in hardcover due to the beautiful picture on the cover!!! You won't be sorry if you buy the book in any form. It's a wonderful, fast moving story that brings a smile to my face often while reading it. Imagine my surprise when I found out at the back of the book that it's based on their real experiences in life!! I thought it was fiction...but many times while reading it I wondered how it could have been fiction when it reads so "real". I am recommending it to all of my friends.

I look forward to the Author's next book!!!