THE GIRL FROM BORGO

A memoir of an American-born woman’s long relationship with a small town in Tuscany.

Although debut author Fix was born in Chicago, she moved with her family to a street called Borgo in tiny Cetona, Italy, at a young age. The author learned Italian, went to school, and experienced the many joys and hardships of growing up on what, for her, was foreign soil. However, when she later attended Yale University, she felt alienated from her fellow American students. She had no shared experiences with them, and she found complex course work in the English language to be oddly challenging. She later returned to Cetona many times to visit, but she would build her professional and personal life in the United States. After decades of living in America, she decided to come back and spend a full year in Cetona. The book chronicles her time back in Italy and mixes it with memories of her past. As she visits with old friends, she’s reminded of what makes a small town great (everyone knows everyone) and awful (everyone gossips about everyone: “Even when you do things with the best intentions, here someone will find fault”). Fix writes lovingly of the many characters that make up this “lost town in the hills”; one person is described as possessing “gentle brown eyes” and another as a “great-looking woman.” But although such descriptions are heartfelt, readers may sometimes find it difficult to differentiate between the many figures that she encountered during her stay. They also add to a hefty page count. Still, Fix’s focus on the small town of Cetona is inarguably unusual, and her remembrance is full of illuminating details, particularly when comparing cultures. For example, of New York City’s Little Italy, she writes: “They spoke dialects I couldn’t understand and thought Italian food something it isn’t.” The end result is a touching personal tale that’s full of nostalgia yet strikingly honest.

An original, if unapologetically lengthy, memoir of an American’s Italian life.