PINCH ME

Boyle recounts her adventures restoring an Italian farmhouse with her husband in this debut memoir.

The village of Monforte sits at the foot of the Alps in the Piemonte region of Northern Italy. The author and her husband, Kim, live a few miles outside of town in a 300-year-old farmhouse that they have spent the past few years restoring, “[t]aking this wonderful stone structure apart, virtually stone by stone, and putting it back together.” Boyle and Kim first discovered the picturesque Langhe area of Piemonte during their honeymoon. They immediately fell in love with this land of winding roads, cobblestone streets, and hilltop churches as well as the welcoming people and divine food. When the trip ended and the couple returned to their lives in San Francisco, the author could not get Monforte out of her thoughts—newly retired, she was determined to buy a home there, even if the still-working Kim wasn’t convinced. A subsequent trip sealed the deal, and before they left the couple were shown the dilapidated farmhouse that would become theirs. Set on a hillside, “it looked out over the whole world—vineyards, hazelnut orchards, farms and forests, and even the little hill town of Monforte, all the way out to the craggy Alps, still brushed with just a smattering of snow on the highest peak.” In this memoir, Boyle recounts the thrilling if arduous process of restoring the old house (and the larger barn, which became the property’s primary residence) while acclimating to the slower pace of life in the Langhe. Relating vignettes of Italian life—such as stumbling upon a chef and her neighbors pinching thousands of ravioli for a restaurant’s weekly menu—as well as bits of secondhand Italian wisdom, Boyle ends each chapter with a recipe or two of Piemontese cuisine.

The author’s prose has a breathless enthusiasm familiar to anyone who has listened to an American just back from Italy delivering an endless series of odes to food, wine, and food cooked in wine: “We stopped and ate lunch at a trattoria in a whitewashed little cottage that served traditional Piemontese cuisine. I ordered roast veal smothered in Barolo with vegetables, cooked for hours. It was so tender it fell apart at the touch of my fork.” The process of restoring the house makes for a satisfying read, in part because it fulfills the fantasy many readers have likely had (and likely never acted on) of undertaking a similar project in a similarly beautiful landscape. This pleasant aura of escapism is sadly marred by Boyle’s slightly insufferable regard for all things Piemontese. While the author likely intends the text to be taken as travel writing, it more often reads like a victory lap for a wealthy couple who successfully bought a second home. Even when dark subjects rear their heads—a cancer diagnosis, Covid-19’s ravaging of Italy—they are quickly dispatched, and good vibes are restored. Some readers will find this all a lovely vacation, but others will no doubt roll their eyes at one italicized Italian phrase too many.

A richly evoked if sometimes grating account of an adventurous retirement project.