Customer Reviews

Pasquale's Nose: Idle Days in an Italian Town

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I picked this book up praying that it would not be about the exploits of some annoying North American couple who buy an old, decaying villa, purportedly of historic renown, and then hurriedly write a book to pay for their folly. I didn't want Bella Tuscany, I wanted Ugly Tuscany. Something with an edge, rough. Broken terra cotta. Dusty. Weathered. Parched. Pasquale's Nose is all that and more.

In this case we get Ugly Tuscia, which rests near between Umbria and Tuscany. Michael Rips is not working and on his wife's suggestion they up and leave the United States for the lovely Italian hilltown of Sutria.

He gives us just enough information about himself and why he's in Italy to keep you interested. His wife has coaxed him to go the Etruscan village of Sutria so that she can paint. They have brought their infant daughter with them.

If you've been to any tiny little hill in the Tuscan area then this book will fill on the pieces you may have wanted to remember when you returned home but forgot.

Rips recounts some of the history the town, which is wry and funny like most things in Italy. The local characters that he describes throughout the book are what I remember vividly-coarse, refined, and yet slightly tart. You'll find out who Pasquale really is, who the outcasts of the town are, and more dirt than Bella Tuscany was willing to reveal.

Think of this book as `Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' in Italy.

I enjoyed this book immensely. Michael Rips moves with his wife and daughter to Sutri, a town in Tuscany close to Rome, and discovers one of the oddest cast of characters imaginable. I suspect that Rips has a penchant for the odd and grotesque; still, I don't think he was inventing the aristocrat with a cat's paw for a hand, the old men with fond memories of POW camps in America, the restauranteur who refuses to serve dessert, or any of the other strange figures who populate this memoir of life in an Italian town. ...[The] book is a deeply welcome change from the ecstatic, sun-soaked memoirs typical of the genre. It also has a much more refined sense of history and sociology; Rips makes valient efforts to understand the unconventional mentality of the inhabitants of Sutri, all of whom attribute their marked clannishness to an Etruscan heritage (incorrectly, as it turns out.) This book was at once more realistic, and more fantastic than the average travelogue, almost like a fairy tale in the whimsicality of the stories it spun. My only quibble with the book is that Rips, a first-time author, didn't tell us enough about himself or what he was doing in Italy for me to really care about him or his family. The book has no sense of narrative; it's more a collection of sketches of his neighbors. I actually didn't realize Rips was an attorney until I read about it on Amazon; he portrays himself as a good-for-nothing layabout with no skills. A more honest account of himself, his family, and what they were doing in Sutri would have helped me better situate myself while reading this utterly engaging travel memoir. Still, this is one of the best examples of the genre I've read in a long time.

As one of the many who has fallen in lust with Italy over a too-short visit, I found this a fun read.

The author displays a whacked-out sense of humor as he deconstructs the citizenry of a small town (large village?) north of Rome. There seems to be an unusually large number of eccentrics inside those ancient walls, and one more - in the person of Rips - just adds to the brew. He seems out of his element in the beginning, but eventually you start to think he's landed exactly where he belongs, in a sort of beign asylum where the inmates are the admissions committee.

The dry commentary reminded me of the great Ludwig Bemelmens, one of the 20th century's premier travel essayists, though sadly largely forgotten today. Maybe you've read D.H.Lawrence's accounts of travel in Italia - infuse an offbeat sense of humor and a semi-fictional tone and you'll come away with a copy of Pasquale's Nose. If you don't get to go to Italy yourself this year - or, better yet, if you do - this may be the perfect vacation read.

Read the rave reviews and then read the book yourself. Pasquale's Nose is a big disappointment and not tied together well, chapter to chapter. Michael Rips flits from subject to subject, character to character without developing anything enough to make you care and there is a rich seam of stories about the residents and history of Sutri to be told here. The book is unsatisfying and unfinished and attempts to be philisophical at the end with a discussion of Adam and Eve and the question "Where Are You?". Even so, I am glad I read the book because it opened up the village of Sutri, Italy -- and surrounding area -- for my further investigation. It whetted my appetite. I'll give Paquale's Nose that.

Having read and greatly enjoyed this story, I later found myself at Sutri enroute from Rome to Tuscany. My wife and I stopped to stretch our legs and see the town. It is as described, and so are the people. When Michael's name and/or book were mentioned, most people rolled their eyes (lovingly). This book made a visit to Sutri infinitely more enjoyable, and made it a special place among places on the Via Cassia (SS2).

Rips is an entertaining writer but few words in this book ring true. A town of 5,000 people in Italy where all the old folks (and others) speak English and a foreigner who speaks no Italian gets the whole scoop and makes great friends in a few months?
Truly unbelievable. The book started sounding made up with one of the first stories, about the beans--beans noted throughout Italy, by the way, as the only ones never to cause indigestion. By the end, it was total super realism. That said, Rips is an entertaining writer who should stick to fiction that's billed as such.

"The kind of book you want to read out loud to someone.... even the stranger sitting next to you!" Uriel Dana

History, eccentric characters & dry wit synergistically arrange themselves into laugh-out-loud combinations in Pasquale's Nose.
In each chapter Rips demonstrates brilliant observational and storytelling abilities.

By the end of the book, all of these surreal characters began to develop a larger, over-soul quality. They reminded me of cultures like the Aboriginal Australians that perceive realities on more than one level. The stories and the history of this place are not only extremely interesting and funny, but they left me pondering the possibilities for hours.

I could not get interested in this at all. Maybe 4-5 pages held my interest. Each chapter deals with a different character in the village or an event that happened - not a lot of continuity - the characters weren't engrossing enough to make me want to know more about them. I love books about Italy and Tuscany in particular but this would be pretty low on my list.

As one of the many who has fallen in lust with Italy over a too-short visit, I found this a fun read.

The author displays a whacked-out sense of humor as he deconstructs the citizenry of a small town (large village?) north of Rome. There seems to be an unusually large number of eccentrics inside those ancient walls, and one more - in the person of Rips - just adds to the brew. He seems out of his element in the beginning, but eventually you start to think he's landed exactly where he belongs, in a sort of beign asylum where the inmates are the admissions committee.

The dry commentary reminded me of the great Ludwig Bemelmens, one of the 20th century's premier travel essayists, though sadly largely forgotten today. Maybe you've read D.H.Lawrence's accounts of travel in Italia - infuse an offbeat sense of humor and a semi-fictional tone and you'll come away with a copy of Pasquale's Nose. If you don't get to go to Italy yourself this year - or, better yet, if you do - this may be the perfect vacation read.

This book had me laughing out loud. Sparsely written but very much to the point. Rips captures the Italian character precisely.