Italian Neighbors: Or, A Lapsed Anglo-Saxon in Verona Paperback – June 1, 1993

Parks gives the reader a series of vignettes with a slim narrative connection but his stories never seem to come alive with a true appreciation for Italy. Although I found bits and pieces to be very good -- choosing a cafe, for example, or first sampling his neighbor's prosecco wine -- on the whole the book left me with absolutely no desire to visit the Italy of his experiences, and no interest in reading any of Parks' other books.

Such a funny book, one of my favs

There are a great deal of people giving this book praise. I can't be one of them. It was a good deal for the money that I paid, since I found it remaindered at Crown Books (Remember Crown?) for 2.99, instead of 19.95, which was indication then that too many of these books had been printed even then.

The problem that the telling is two fold. One of theme and one of technique. Reading Tim Parks was tiring. Short chapters that string together if you lead an existential life, but within these 5 and 10 page chapters are long paragraphs and almost non-existent dialogue told in first person. My brain aches from needing a rest between such long passages. Certainly I start to learn about the little part of the world Parks calls home, but the rhythm is all wrong. Good way to put me to sleep every night and that surely was not the intent of the author.

The second fault is that of theme. After more than half the book you realize that there is no story but to be told what life is like for the man in the city on the outskirts of Verona. There is no quest, there is no reason, it is just the telling of the exposure to the little world of Via Colombare, that you/I begin to wonder why? Do Frances Mayes and Peter Mayle have these same problems or are they more deft at showing us a story when one is transplanted to another culture.

For 2.99 instead of $20, it was worth an exploration but never a return visit.

I read this after reviewing "The Italians" by John Hooper (2015). Parks is a skilled critic (see his essay collection "To Hell and Back" from 2001). Here, he becomes our interpreter to his adopted land, for he concludes by calling this an "arrival book" and not an ex-pat's chronicle--for he intends to stay. He maneuvers the intricacies that Hooper notes, of getting used to the mores, bureaucracy, tax evasion, nepotism, pride, family in-fighting, and the nosiness of his neighbors. Parks lives in "an exquisite confusion of invading suburbia and peasant tradition" ten minutes outside Verona (5). I wonder how his neighborhood has changed a quarter-century later since this was published back in 1991, as increasing expansion gobbles up farmland?

Industrial estates mingle with overblown villas, abandoned fields with factory farming, and fearful traffic races inches past houses and windows. Parks advises newcomers to find a local bar and befriend the natives, who otherwise resent the in-comers, and this tension between those coming into the North of Italy, whether from the South, from other nations, or as second-home gentrifiers, gives this account more grit and tension underneath the surface.

He finds, as at the bar, people living with two facades. The public one looks ragged, to evade taxes or scrutiny, but the private one opens up to reveal tradition, conformity, and secrets. "Anarchy without, ceremony within." (26) On the surface, Parks narrates nearly a year, from glaring summer through foggy seasons in hot or cold weather, back to glorious spring. His wife bears them a daughter at the end of this account (followed by "Italian Education"), so they will indeed settle down past their year's rent of their share of the noisy concrete villa on Via Colombine, next to the eternally barking dog Vega and above their crazy neighbor Lucilla.

My favorite chapters, as each comprises an elegant essay on a topic ordered chronologically, were on taxes, the way state jobs are coveted, and the local cemetery. Parks ends that section with mixed feelings about where his neighbors have settled in for so long, in life and in death. "Life is so carefully controlled in the Veneto, so attractively wrapped up: cappuccino until ten, then espresso; aperitivo after twelve; your pasta, your meat, your dolce in bright packaging; light white wine, strong red wine, prosecco; baptism, first communion, marriage, funeral; loculo, lumino, exhumation." (149) For, after 10 years, your bones will be dug up-- replaced by a more recent arrival, related to you, in your family plot, and it's off to the ossuary for your remains.

Parks writes well. He doesn't give us much sense of why he and his wife chose there, other than that he teaches at the university in Verona. He gives almost nothing about his past life or his wife's backstory as an Italian. While this focus allows us to concentrate on what he wants to share with us as a common period of adaptation, it risks making Parks and his wife more minor characters than protagonists. His neighbors, as the title indicates, take center stage. Still, I would have liked to know more about Parks, his wife, and how they picked Montecchio village.

I enjoy _Under the Tuscan Sun_ when I'm in the mood for a touch of poetry, as melodramatic as the book sometimes gets, but I have never made the mistake of believing that it describes the reality of living in Italy. With Tim Parks, however, what I get is a sympathetic, yet not rosy-clouded story about why he decided to make Italy his home, and what happened after. Told with humor, a good eye for dialogue and character, and with an underlying affection for his adopted country that comes through. Yes, the incident with the dog threw me a little, although I'm not sure it wasn't a bit of hyperbole to emphasize how miserable it is to have a howling dog outside your window at all hours. I also realize that my American attitude towards pets can be very different from the Italian attitude, as the abandoned dogs at Pompeii demonstrate. Either way, it shouldn't be enough to spoil the book for you, especially since the dog is not harmed.