An often funny, if sometimes-meandering, tour of Italian culture.
In this comedic memoir, a Dutch couple moves to the Italian countryside with hopes of opening a bed-and-breakfast.
In 2007, Smulders and his husband, Nico, left their native country of the Netherlands and traveled to Pavia, Italy, to search for a new home. The author intended to spend the next six months working on his master’s degree in medieval culture while his husband enjoyed the reprieve provided by a sabbatical. They managed to find their dream home in the municipality of Montecalvo Versiggia despite the apparent laziness of their real estate agent, and they successfully bought it for the grand sum of $200,000. Of course, the building needed work before it could properly welcome paying visitors, so the pair hired a contractor—a memorably dyspeptic man named Torti—to steward the project. Despite the relative modesty of the job’s scale, plenty predictably went wrong, and the author describes the foibles of renovation with verve and humor. The author depicts Italy’s notoriously Byzantine bureaucracy as a relentless antagonist that made even the most menial tasks difficult: “Italy is a country full of rules and regulations, but these rules and regulations were not created to shed light on what is right and what is wrong, in fact quite on the contrary,” the author observes. “It seems that they were actually designed to deprive one of clear-cut solutions.” Smulders finally abandons his studies—in part, because he’s given virtually no guidance from an absentee academic supervisor—and instead devotes himself to the eventual unveiling of the B&B, called “Villa I Due Padroni.” Smulders provides a running commentary on Italian culture that’s both perspicacious and sharp-witted. However, sometimes it becomes overly digressive; there are several pages, for example, devoted to the drama of finding and using a toilet. Also, the prose can be overly exuberant at times—it’s astonishing how many sentences end with exclamation points. Still, this is a charmingly lighthearted recollection, even when the author faces genuinely exasperating trials, and it’s as good an introduction to the inimitable Italian ways of everyday life as one is likely to find.
An often funny, if sometimes-meandering, tour of Italian culture.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5071-6296-5
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Babelcube
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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