A New York Times Notable Book: A deliciously entertaining account of expatriate life in a small village just outside Verona, Italy. Tim Parks is anything but a gentleman in Verona. So after ten years of living with his Italian wife, Rita, in an Italian condominium bubbling with Italian life around him, the novelist found that he had inadvertently collected a gallery full of splendid characters. In this wittily observed account, Parks introduces readers to his home, a typical provincial Italian neighborhood with a statue of the Virgin at one end of the street, a derelict bottle factory at the other, and a wealth of exotic flora and fauna in between. Via Colombre, the village's main street, offers an exemplary hodgepodge of all that is new and old in the bel paese, a point of collision between invading suburbia and diehard peasant tradition in a sometimes madcap, sometimes romantic, always mixed-up world of creeping vines, stuccoed walls, shotguns, security cameras, hypochondria, and expensive sports cars. More than a mere travelogue, Italian Neighbors is a vivid portrait of the real Italy and a compelling story of how even the most foreign people and places gradually assume the familiarity of home.
