NAKED (IN ITALY)

Evans’ debut memoir charts her adventures in Italy, first as a graduate student and then as the fiancee of an Italian man with hard-to-please parents.

The American author and her two younger brothers were raised by a single mom, and her father, who was largely absent during the first nine years of her life, only sporadically visited. In 2008, when she was 27, one of her siblings tragically died, plaguing her with feelings of guilt and a need to seize all the possibilities that life might have in store. She arrived in the San Lorenzo area of Florence, Italy, on her birthday the next year to study painting: “I needed catharsis more than oxygen,” she writes, and the vibrancy of Italy seemed to promise that very catharsis. She eventually found her niche as an artist; she first painted a series of images of vaginas in close-up and then moved on to video work in which she asked women to describe an orgasm on-camera. As Evans hit her creative stride, she began a relationship with a handsome Italian man named Francesco. They fell in love, but their romance was tested when she met his domineering parents, who instantly disliked her—and weren’t afraid to let it be known. Throughout this wittily acerbic memoir, Evans offers dry humor and sharp feminist insights. She notes, for example, how she felt inhibited around Francesco’s mom, as “it was a little hard to open up around someone who appeared to beg God to kill you on a regular basis,” but she wasn’t willing to give in to her demands and assume a traditional role of a wife and daughter-in-law. “I’d never liked the idea of packaged identities,” Evans writes, noting “that being someone’s wife or mom meant specific things to people and that they’d relentlessly try to make you fit into that mold until you succumbed or died.” Throughout the book, Evans effectively balances moments of humor and self-discovery, resulting in a read that’s appealingly candid and often funny.

A remembrance that offers keen observations about cultural differences while celebrating the power of love.