Customer Reviews

Seasons in Basilicata: A Year in a Southern Italian Hill Village

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

 

 

Read this book. You won't be disappointed. Although its initial appeal for me was the connection to Carlo Levi's, "Christ Stopped at Eboli," I was enchanted by Yeadon's narrative of daily life in a small town in the Mezzogiorno. I am a little tired of the mania for Northern Italy and have been seeking to experience the "other Italy." After all, it was the southerners who migrated to America in vast numbers and it is their legacy that has thrived and enriched the culture of the United States. If you enjoy this, read Paul Paolicelli's "Under the Southern Sun." Both of these books are a feast. Buon appetito!

David Yeadon has done a great service in his excellent narrative of a year spent in the remote and little known region of Basilicata. He initally is interested in the town of Aliano where the anti-fascist writer Carlo Levi was exiled in 1935. There he and his wife spend a year getting to know the region and its people.
I would recommend reading Carlo Levi's Christ Stopped at Eboli before reading Seasons in Basilicata. I would also recommend the film of the same title based on Levi's work.
The only small criticism I would make is that there could have been more careful editing. There are some instances of misuse of Italian words: such as using "padronale" as a noun--it is an adjective relating to a "padrone" or boss in all senses of the word. There was also an instance where he gives the equivalent of fifteen million lire as seventy-five-thousand dollars: it was actually less than ten-thousand dollars. But, considering the work as a whole, these are minor.
Thanks to David Yeadon for exposing this hidden corner of Italy. The reader will find a place far different from the Italy on the tourist trails--and he or she will be richer for it.

Thanks to a previous reviewer, after checking this book out of the library I decided that I'd better read "Christ Stopped at Eboli" first. The books, read together, make for a wonderful literary experience. "Christ Stopped at Eboli" is really a masterpiece, and after finishing it, I was even more interested in reading "Seasons in Basilicata" and finding out more about this fascinating part of Italy.

Having read a number of travel books in the last year, I would rank this book in the top third. I like the fact that Yeadon spent almost an entire year in this one little town; in some books (like "Under the Tuscan Sun"), the author makes twice-yearly visits to an area -- I don't think it's possible to really capture the "flavor" of a place under these circumstances. Also, Yeadon has a good sense of humor, and there were many places in the book where I simply laughed out loud. While the food of the area was certainly described with relish, it wasn't overemphasized. Yeadon has lots to say about lots of things -- and I came away from the book with a much better understanding of the history, architecture, economy, and atmosphere of the area. Yeadon clearly has a gregarious, extroverted personality which shines through the pages -- he got to know a lot of natives on what seemed to be a more than superficial level. When Yeadon's year in Basilicata was over, the sense of poignancy and sadness at leaving was palpable.

I bought this book with high hopes...my husband loves the book "Christ Stopped at Eboli", we've lived in southern Italy for over five years when you add it up (thank you, U. S. Navy!), and the reviews were promising. I have to admit that I was disappointed, and my husband couldn't even bring himself to finish the book. What bothered me most was that the author, who is a veteran travel writer, took himself off to Italy for an extended stay and didn't bother to try to learn more than tourist Italian before he got there, and then didn't manage to improve his language skills once he was settled. Most of the interviews and conversations he describes in the book were translated for him by someone else. Now, I am the first to admit that Italian is a fairly complex language, especially when it comes to verbs. However, I can attest to the fact that it's possible to learn basic Italian by living in Italy and trying very, very hard to speak with everyone, read newspapers, watch TV, etc. The author's failure to do this results in some assessments of southern Italian life that are a little off kilter. For example, his reference to "colpo grosso" in the section about Italian eroticism and TV shows misses the fact that the game show he was watching was a well-known game show with that phrase as its name. (It's now syndicated.) It isn't a genre of TV shows at all.

I did love the author's sketches of the Basilicata region. I wish he'd sketched more and written less, because I would have liked the book a great deal more. Basilicata is indeed a wonderful and under-rated region of Italy. It has much to offer; it's mysterious, beautiful, remote and unique. It's nice to see that publishers are interested in bringing out books that reveal the secrets of the "untouristed" Italy.

In summary, I got the feeling that Mr. Yeadon would have loved his time in Italy even more than he did had he been able to understand more of what people were saying around him, and the fact that he didn't appear to try (based on what he wrote in the book) to learn Italian, or even to get a tutor, really bothered me. He missed out on a lot of the subtleties of Italian life by not learning more of the rich, musical Italian language. Living in Italy is a complicated, rewarding and frustrating experience, but it can be life-changing. The author would have experienced more of the true Italy had he been able to talk more with the people he saw each day.

I found this book to be insightful and illustrative. Clearly this is an unusual book. It is like a combination travelogue, novel and diary. I almost gave up on it early on due to what seemed irrelevant ramblings of the author but I am very glad I stuck it out because it improves as you move through it.

Reading this book gave me a much clearer sense of my ancestral roots: my grandfather, like so many others, came to America from this region of Italy and unfortunately he died before I met him. So this book gave me a window to his past and I am grateful to the author for this. Yeadon provides colorful illustrations of the people, customs, beliefs, lifestyle and landscape of Basilicata, using words as his paintbrush. Of course next on my list is Carlo Levi's "Christ Stopped at Eboli." Perhaps reading Levi's book before this one would have been useful but at least now I know the meaning of Levi's title.

I highly recommend this book to the hundreds of thousands of first-, second-, and third-generation Italian-Americans whose ancestors left Basilicata to make a life here in America. I have had difficulty finding many English-language books about Basilicata and it was exciting to find this one. Suggestions in this regard would be welcome - leave me a comment reply to this review if you know of other relevant books...

Actually 2.5 stars. I was given the book by a friend. The two of us went to Italy in 2000, and having family roots in nearby Calabria, I looked forward to reading the work. Unfortunately that desire was short-lived. Now the author, Mr. Yeadon is a good artist. His sketchings of the land of Basilicata were fantastic. They made his descriptive words about the region come to life.

But his words were less than what I hoped for, in the work. I feel that quite often his descriptions of Basilicatans come from his looking down his nose at the people. I believe that he was quick to point out their foibles and brokenness. That is fine if there is a concomitant description of their giftedness. He spent too much time writing on the dark side of "these Italians", and the "Italian way of life". It sure could make one look elsewhere for a vacation. I believe that Carlo Levi was more sympathetic.

I feel that Mr. Levi was quoted way too often. His name was dropped here, there and everywhere. One gets the feeling that Basilicata is worthwhile only because Carlo Levi stopped by.

There is a tendency in the modern work--fiction or non-fiction--to denigrate the Catholic Church. Mr. Yeadon is no different. Why is that? While Mr. Levi was held up as a model, and the "pagani" ways supported, the Church was ridiculed. I don't think that is fair, because the Church does a lot of good for people, despite her foibles.

There is just a little too much of Mr. Yeadon in the book, he plays too large a role, and seems to be unable to be objective in his account. I don't know if I will read another of his works. Maybe.

Mr. Yeadon's book makes for a pleasant read, but in one sense it is the chronicle of a missed opportunity. For, despite his months as a resident of a village in Basilicata, and his pleasure in the rich, and extensively chronicled world of Mezziogiorno hospitality, there are very large areas of life in the village that remained closed to him. Perhaps any outsider, no matter who, would need years to go deeper into the secrets of such a place. I also surmise that Mr. Yeadon, who by his own admission is a poor linguist, was handicapped by his limited knowledge of Italian, not to mention of the local dialects.

Still, the author's affection for the places and people he describes is real, there are many enjoyable passages, and the landscape sketches he has made in inkwash are very appealing. I do fault the editorial staff of Harper for a poor job of copy editing. There are way too many adjectives, and the prose style tends to the purple, with too many clichés and even mistakes in grammar and diction. The book is also, in my view, too long by about 15%. A leaner, more tightly edited text would have improved the final product.

I was interested in this book because the author proposed to make descriptive comparisons of the area in Italy where Carlo Levy was interned during WWII. Although the writing style was less than engaging, I read every page looking for insights for a similar (but much shorter) trip. In Basilicata, I made mental comparisons of his descriptions with what I saw. Nothing seemed to match. Tonight I started a oil painting based on my photographs of Graco (an abandoned city high on a hill) the author had written about. That passage (two pages) intrigued me more than anything else in his book. This evening I turned to those pages (which included a quotation from another travel book about why the city had been abandoned and a sketch of the city on the hill). Finally, I understood. The author's drawing resembles the description he quoted, not the actual site. Perhaps, as a previous reviewer pointed out, the author didn't speak the language and didn't understand . . . perhaps he did spend time in Basilicata. I serious doubt he ever saw Graco. I'd encourage anyone who plans to go to Basilicata to disregard this book. Basilicata is a haunting beautiful place.

My sister and I are going to Italy in September of this year and I have been doing research with regards to my Grandmother's village in Missonella, Basilicata, Southern Italy, and I had found nothing at all regarding her village until David Yeadon's wonderful book and sketches, he had sketched two pictures of my grandmother's village. I love his book and I have to admit his descriptions of the food and people were fantastic. He made you want the food so bad you could almost smell it cooking. David should think of writing a cooking book. From David's description of my grandmother's village it is a goat trail on the side of a mountain. And my sister and I are not that adventerous, we are going with Perillo Tours, because we have never left the United States and need our hand held....maybe another time, the closest we will be is Naples and that is where she left from, so we are happy and so pleased with his book, I bought copies for all my sisters, brothers and children, 8 copies so far.... thank you so much for the sketches, I would have loved to see his photographs of the region so I would know some of my heritage. Denise Philley

I was attracted to this book because of my recent trips to this region. I commend the author for some of his encounters and descriptions, but I had the constant feeling when he talked about situations without involving himself. I guess this comes from not having a good command of the language. For example, he talks often of the men that gather daily in the square, yet he never seeks them out to discover their histories or conversations. I wanted to push him of his balcony. Forse troppo caffè corretto . . .