Customer Reviews

A Season with Verona: Travels Around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Character, and...Goals!

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3 star:		(4)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Part travelogue, part mediation on the Italian national character, and part football memoir, Englishman Parks' diary of his season with the fans of Hellas Verona is a muddled but generally enjoyable hodgepodge of anecdotes and musings. A lifelong football fan, twenty year resident of Italy, and fluent speaker of Italian, Parks is an ably accredited guide to the myriad mysteries and intrigues of Italian professional football. His method was to attach himself to the hardcore fans of his local club and go to every home and away game in search of... well, something...

In doing so, Parks excels at recreating emotional highs and lows and retelling specific anecdotes experienced over the course of the season. However, by attaching himself to these fans, he places himself in the uncomfortable position of riding along with some of Italy's most racist fans. He tries to deal with this a number of ways, from placing them in a broader context of a nation absorbing large numbers of refugees, to attempting to show that the racist cheers actually represent a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy brought about by sensationalist journalism. Neither approach is very credible and it's a shame that Parks kind of dances around it. More insightful is his analysis of the fans as self-appointed pariahs/Davids, sort of a mix of "Nobody likes us, and we don't care" and "It's us against the world."

As the season progresses, and Parks travels around Italy, one gets a very keen sense of the deep regionalism that exists in Italy. From politics to chanted terrace insults, there's a prominent theme of disdain for the "other". Other overall themes are lacking, as might be expected from a book written on the fly, but for the careful reader, there are some strong bits where he gets into corruption both in football and Italian society, or his meditation on the psyche of the referee. Another fun aspect to the book is that it contains a plethora of vile Italian insults and terrace chants, which are often quite hilarious.

One thing that is a bit off about it, is that is only obliquely references Joe McGinniss' excellent book The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro, in which McGinniss also recounts a year following an Italian. It's a shame, 'cause the two books take quite different approaches (McGinniss is an outsider to soccer, can't speak Italian, and follows the team from within), making them rather complimentary. On the whole, I found McGinniss' more enjoyable, and more likely to appeal to the general reader, although neither author is very good at describing action on the pitch. In any event, both paint a picture of league riddled with corruption, game fixing, and bribery, which begs the question of why anyone would bother caring deeply about it?

An English academic, living and teaching in Northern Italy for the past twenty years, Tim Parks offers a colorful, rich, detailed account of a year (2000-01) following his historic local football club, Hellas Verona. This is a week-by-week, blow-by-blow account, up close and very personal. He starts as an interested observer and becomes a believer.

Better that this is written by a man of letters than by a journalist or a sportswriter, Parks at times becomes perhaps literate in studying the passion behind the football fans who seem to live and die by the fortunes of their favorites. Best of all, Parks chose a season that provided a riveting conclusion to a season of ups and downs. Sadly, a quick look at Italy's Serie A standings in early 2003 finds Hellas mired in mid-level Serie B.

Hellas fans are, at times, boisterous, irreverent, profane, vulgar, and, among the hard core, loyal to a fist fight and to a fault. Seeing them week by week, after a crazed introduction on the first, mind numbing rod trip to the south, Parks offers the insight of an Englishman not unfamiliar with football hooligans but also willing to try to understand the mind and life of the devoted Hellas fan.

Enjoy the passion.

It's not that this isn't a good book but if you've read any of these "follow the club for a season" book, it really offers nothing new other than following a team in another nation. Yes, we find out that all supporters seem hung up on chldish racist/sexist comments/chants. I did like the fact he incorporated Web site BBS postings as many of those were a laugh.

I mean, I do get the whole group mentality male bonding deal that soccer fandom is all about but what i really wanted to know more than anything from this book was why Italian soccer is so popular yet so mindnumbingly dull to watch. How many 0-0, 1-0 matches does Italian Serie A produce? I wanted to find out why a vibrant and colorful culture of fandom (and food, art, fashion, politics, etc.) can somehow produce possibly the worst excuse for entertainment on the soccer pitch ever.

Parks vividly captures segments of life on the road following a not-so-glamourous and not-so-successful football team in one of the more cryptic, corrupt and colourful leagues in the world. Overall it is superb reading. The narrative of the season is skillfully depicted. From the blow by blow description of the first away trip to the hothouse atmosphere of the final match, it captures the excitement and dreariness of the season and provides moments of humour as well as disgust. Some of these fans and their behaviour are truly abhorent. However, that is the nature of the game and Parks is obliged to describe them. Whether you think he is overly sympathetic is toward the hard core fans is up to the reader to judge.
Where it fails is in its more lofty ambitions of drawing a canvas of every aspect of life in Italy. The editing could have been more rigorous as the constant to-ing and fro-ing between football and non-football analogies is distracting, particularly in the middle third of the book.
No book written by a fan about fans can truly capture a global view of any game. This book certainly doesn't although it sometimes tries hard. For a more historical and analytical view of the game, I recommend Foot's book. However, if you're after something to give you an idea of the joy and bitterness of life on the terraces, read this.

Without doubt this is the best football book that I've ever read. Right from the start Tim Parks actually draws the reader into the unfolding drama and story, rather than it just being a case of you reading a book and just taking information in. You'll find yourself eagerly flicking pages to find out what happened next, sometimes I read this book deep (and I mean, deep!) into the early morning rather than put the book down.

Basically this book is all about Hellas Verona football club in Italy, and their battle to stay in the top division in Italy, Serie A. They are one of the most, if not the most, unfashionable clubs in Italy to support, due to the media's overblown coverage of the club's racism problems.

In this book you'll find out about many interesting fans and the sometimes hilarious, sometimes appalling, things they got upto throughout a tense season. It's a totally factual account and that makes this all the more intriguing. If you thought you knew everything about Italian football then take a read of this, you'll be surprised at what really goes on. You thought rivalry was bad in English football!

Not only did Verona have to battle the media and their reputation, but added to that was the fact that they did not have the resources of huge clubs like Inter Milan and Juventus.

Tim Parks wrote this book extremely well, never baffling the reader or losing the plot. It's very enjoyable and added to that you'll learn snippets of the Italian language and all about the Italian way of life.

A superb read.

I recommend Tim Parks's books, "An Italian Education "and "My Italian Neighbors" to everyone planning a trip to Italy. His wonderful observations, funny stories are pure delight.
I am an American, who has lived in Italy for 30 years. I understand the interest of the middle class Italians for "football." Much like the passion of the middle class Americans for American football.
Mr. Parks's book is too narrow in interest. If you want to know about Italian football and the personalities of the players and the fans then read, "The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro." Now that book scores a ten!
Frankly, this book is dead boring.

I couldn't wait to read Tim Park's latest after reading and thoroughly enjoying his other books on Italian life. To be truthful, I did not know it was all about soccer. Not being a huge soccer fan but being a huge fan of Italian life, I skeptically started the book. It is pure Tim Parks. Wonderful descriptions that put the reader right into the scene. His characters are authentic and his analogies of the game and Italian history and politics insightful. That's the love part. The part I didn't love was his
constant use of Italian profanity. To me it was just too much. Authentic maybe but unnecessary to make his point. A worthwhile read nonetheless.

I won't go into all the details like others but I think the fact that he discusses the ugly losses as much as the great wins helps the book. Great insight as a writer that lives in the town that he follows, which an outsider would miss. If you're familar with the sport and are a supporter but want a different view then consider reading, also. Too bad about the teams's current situation/standing! Best of luck to them.
Overall, a great read because (unlike the approach here) anybody can write happy (boring) stories about the giant, bandwagon teams.

As a season ticket holder for AS Roma in Italy's Serie A, I could barely wait to get my hands on Parks' book. I knew that there was so much in the world of Serie A that would appeal to not only the soccer fan but also the casual reader. The unbelievable week in-week out pressure, the political intrigue, the half-truths in the newspapers, the "ultras" that make all American fans seem meek, the life or death atmosphere of Serie A soccer...
Parks' book just fails to capture it. Instead he keeps going back to the "boia" word that he seems to have a fixation on, and becomes annoyingly focused on the misdeeds done by the ultras. It doesn't help that Verona has the most racist fans of any squad in Italian soccer. Maybe Parks really didn't have anything to write about up there, but here with La Roma, he would definitely have found lots of beautiful stuff. Generally he fails to capture the essence of the entire Serie A. After I finished the book I asked myself if he is seeing Serie A through the same eyes that the rest of us are. Take it from a local, he fell and got his face in the mud.

i am not sure if this was a good book or not but i did learn a lot of new italian words some i should probley not use.