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Italian Days
Italian Days is one of the richest and most absorbing travel books ever written"a journey down the Italian peninsula that immerses us in the inexhaustible plenty of that culture and the equally bountiful intelligence and sensibility of its author.
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, noted essayist, journalist, and fiction writer, brings us a fascinating mixture of history, politics, folklore, food, architecture, arts, and literature, studded with local anecdotes and personal reflections. From modern, fashionable Milan; to beautiful, historic Rome with its modern traffic and, even today, its sudden displays of faith; to primitive, brooding Calabria, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison reveals in all its glory and confusion her Italy, the country of her origins, where the keys to her past are held by those who never left.
Beautifully and eloquently rendered, Italian Days is a deeply engaging travelogue, but it is much more as well. It is the story of a return home"of friends, family, and faith"and of the search for the good life that propels all of us on our journeys wherever we are.
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, noted essayist, journalist, and fiction writer, brings us a fascinating mixture of history, politics, folklore, food, architecture, arts, and literature, studded with local anecdotes and personal reflections. From modern, fashionable Milan; to beautiful, historic Rome with its modern traffic and, even today, its sudden displays of faith; to primitive, brooding Calabria, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison reveals in all its glory and confusion her Italy, the country of her origins, where the keys to her past are held by those who never left.
Beautifully and eloquently rendered, Italian Days is a deeply engaging travelogue, but it is much more as well. It is the story of a return home"of friends, family, and faith"and of the search for the good life that propels all of us on our journeys wherever we are.
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
62 people are currently reading
758 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
14 books20 followersBarbara Grizzuti Harrison (14 September 1934 – 24 April 2002) was an American journalist, essayist and memoirist. She is best known for her autobiographical work, particularly her account of growing up as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and for her travel writing.
Her first book, Unlearning the Lie: Sexism in School, was published in 1969. Harrison was one of the first contributors to Ms. magazine.
Harrison became nationally known in 1978 when she published Visions of Glory: A History and a Memory of Jehovah's Witnesses, which combined childhood memoirs with a history of the Jehovah's Witness movement. Although Harrison expressed admiration for individual Witnesses and wrote sympathetically of their persecution, she portrayed the faith itself as harsh and tyrannical, racist and sexist.
Harrison wrote for many of the leading periodicals of her time, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, The Village Voice, The Nation, Ladies' Home Journal and Mother Jones magazine. Among the people she interviewed were Red Barber, Mario Cuomo, Jane Fonda, Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, Francis Ford Coppola, Nadia Comăneci, Alessandra Mussolini and Barbara Bush.
Harrison published two collections of her essays and interviews: Off Center (1980) and The Astonishing World (1992). Her 1992 Harper's essay "P.C. on the Grill", which lampooned the "philosophy" of popular TV chef The Frugal Gourmet, was included in the 1993 edition of Best American Essays.
Harrison also wrote numerous travel articles covering destinations all over the world. She published two books about her travels in Italy, Italian Days (1989) and The Islands of Italy: Sicily, Sardinia, and the Aeolian Islands (1991).
In 1984 Harrison published a novel, Foreign Bodies. She won an O. Henry Award for short fiction in 1989.
(from Wikipedia)
Her first book, Unlearning the Lie: Sexism in School, was published in 1969. Harrison was one of the first contributors to Ms. magazine.
Harrison became nationally known in 1978 when she published Visions of Glory: A History and a Memory of Jehovah's Witnesses, which combined childhood memoirs with a history of the Jehovah's Witness movement. Although Harrison expressed admiration for individual Witnesses and wrote sympathetically of their persecution, she portrayed the faith itself as harsh and tyrannical, racist and sexist.
Harrison wrote for many of the leading periodicals of her time, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, The Village Voice, The Nation, Ladies' Home Journal and Mother Jones magazine. Among the people she interviewed were Red Barber, Mario Cuomo, Jane Fonda, Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, Francis Ford Coppola, Nadia Comăneci, Alessandra Mussolini and Barbara Bush.
Harrison published two collections of her essays and interviews: Off Center (1980) and The Astonishing World (1992). Her 1992 Harper's essay "P.C. on the Grill", which lampooned the "philosophy" of popular TV chef The Frugal Gourmet, was included in the 1993 edition of Best American Essays.
Harrison also wrote numerous travel articles covering destinations all over the world. She published two books about her travels in Italy, Italian Days (1989) and The Islands of Italy: Sicily, Sardinia, and the Aeolian Islands (1991).
In 1984 Harrison published a novel, Foreign Bodies. She won an O. Henry Award for short fiction in 1989.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
February 28, 2023
I spent over two glorious months traveling with Barbara Grizutti Harrison across Italy through this book Italian Days. There’s nothing like having a wonderful writer guide you around all the interesting spots in a place; wonderful authors are good at pointing out things you might have missed, and pointing them out in a way that shares thoughts and ideas you never would have put together. This was a great book to prepare me for my trip to Italy later in the year.
December 21, 2015
This book would not be the average reader's cup of tea to a 4 star level, IMHO. But it's almost a 5 star to me, despite it being dated. 4.5 star
She's not a writer with succinct word skill. She wanders all over the place with interface, comparisons or neither at all. But as much as she has an opinion, she has knowledge of Italy. Location to location and native to tourist! With cultural lens and within age and class insights, and dare I say- judgments. All told, the result is a mighty tome.
To be truthful, it is a read that needs to be taken in small pieces. Most is so dense in association, nuance, related "unsaid"- that it needs to be processed slowly in order to digest the emotive inference. I'll buy this book and at random times- I'll take a visit to one location and walk some serendipity with the woman who was Barbara Harrison.
This is not a novel, nor strictly a non-fiction travelogue. It's more a blueprint to a personality or maybe sets of personalities. One of them is Barbara. But others are unique town Italian in their varying colors of district and custom pageantry, as each bends to its own specific façade and memory core.
She's not a writer with succinct word skill. She wanders all over the place with interface, comparisons or neither at all. But as much as she has an opinion, she has knowledge of Italy. Location to location and native to tourist! With cultural lens and within age and class insights, and dare I say- judgments. All told, the result is a mighty tome.
To be truthful, it is a read that needs to be taken in small pieces. Most is so dense in association, nuance, related "unsaid"- that it needs to be processed slowly in order to digest the emotive inference. I'll buy this book and at random times- I'll take a visit to one location and walk some serendipity with the woman who was Barbara Harrison.
This is not a novel, nor strictly a non-fiction travelogue. It's more a blueprint to a personality or maybe sets of personalities. One of them is Barbara. But others are unique town Italian in their varying colors of district and custom pageantry, as each bends to its own specific façade and memory core.
July 28, 2015
This book would make a good litmus test of whether you (the reader of this review) and I would enjoy each other and have anything to talk about. Reading Italian Days is like being in the company of a remarkably well-read and well-traveled friend who can sit down without notice for a long conversation about Dante, or modern publishing, or why Milan is a fashion capital, or why certain cities are essentially female or male. I have a library copy but will need to buy my own because there are so many passages I wanted to underline. I also need to get everything else Harrison has ever written.
Love.
Love.
July 31, 2015
This book is the first of many Italian-set books (fiction and nonfiction) I plan to read over the course of the year, prior to my hoped-for first trip to Italy in May 2016. "Italian Days" is a good start: it's a travelogue, much like Henry James and others who travel aboard and observe and comment, in a very philosophical way, about the culture. Harrison is rather rambling, though, and I found myself scanning pages when she would go on much too long about something or other, such as when she interviews this strange, famous Italian man or when she makes up a fictional story with dialogue to talk about one of the cities she's in, to give us a sense of place. I preferred that she stuck to her experiences, even the long historical paragraphs, while necessary, were just too long; it was stream of conscious type writing at times. But how wonderful to have the means (this was pre-Euro, in 1985) and the time for true cultural immersion! Her insights are worldly and true... I salivated over her descriptions of food. I wanted to weep over her awe of Tuscany. As I read I kept a guide book next to me, so I could see even more clearly where she was visiting. I loved how she was brave to travel alone and sit in cafes and just appreciate what was around her, trying very hard not to be a tourist, while being a tourist, as I strive to do when I'm abroad... There is a strong sense of regional place despite her rambling.
March 7, 2008
This book came very highly recommended, and I have to admit, I was disappointed. I found it self-absorbed and opaque, inscrutable. Grizzuti Harrison's Italy sounds like a place I would never want to go -- indeed, nothing like the place I've been to -- full of peevish storekeepers, American-hating townspeople, predatory men. I found nothing to love about the Italy depicted in this book and couldn't imagine why the author would subject herself to further months spent there.
The writing is very strange. The sentence structure loops archaically, and the asides that are often inserted into the sentences not only make the reading more difficult, but do nothing to enlighten the reader.
I also took issue with the book's tone and diction. Grizzuti Harrison spends pages and pages on high-flown quotations -- so many that it seems like she's padding her book because she has no thoughts of her own -- yet brings the reader crashing down from these utterances with a few strangely-placed "f-words."
I didn't understand this book. I prefer my own memories of Italy to this author's.
The writing is very strange. The sentence structure loops archaically, and the asides that are often inserted into the sentences not only make the reading more difficult, but do nothing to enlighten the reader.
I also took issue with the book's tone and diction. Grizzuti Harrison spends pages and pages on high-flown quotations -- so many that it seems like she's padding her book because she has no thoughts of her own -- yet brings the reader crashing down from these utterances with a few strangely-placed "f-words."
I didn't understand this book. I prefer my own memories of Italy to this author's.
March 15, 2019
Lyrical with eloquent descriptions of locales, Italian Days is evocative but lacking. The humor, though clever, is a bit affected with dated references, and the overall tone is precious and aloof. The travelogue's air of detachment and condescension reads so oppressive to me in some passages that I had to put it down and take a break from it. Harrison's outsider approach made it nearly impossible for me to become immersed in her narrative. I agree that the food descriptions offer the book's high points, but as a first-generation Italian who's been to my ancestral homeland seven times, I didn't get the Italy that I know and love from her, but I will say that she was spot-on about some of the pejorative idiosyncrasies such as the cleanliness of Italian households and the country's tedious bureaucracy. But too often she may as well say, "My word, will you look at the natives!" Her generalizations about Italians -- a country that unified less than 200 years ago with multiple influences -- dumbs down what would otherwise have won me over as astute observations. Some passages hearkened the snobby Brits of E.M. Forster's Room With a View.
*Pish. Posh. Waves fly away.*
*Pish. Posh. Waves fly away.*
December 17, 2012
Being a big devotee of Italy and its culture,I really thought this was going to be a fabulous book--I was extremely disappointed. The author was more interested in her own thoughts and religious beliefs to really do any justice to the Italian landscape.
July 14, 2013
A fantastic writer and thinker.
May 5, 2022
Reading Barbara Grizzuti Harrison’s Italian Days felt a lot like playing a slot machine. It was boring most of the time but paid off just often enough to keep me going.
Here’s a couple of the pleasant recollections Grizzuti Harrison (GH) summoned. She had me remembering my aunts, two sisters who worked at the same big pharmaceutical company, which, like those women of southern Italy who worked in a factory, they always referred to as “the place.” They (my aunts) even referred to their work friends as “the girls up the place.” Another good memory GH brought to mind was the dropping of vowels from the end of many words, particularly foods. I always laughed when my dad dropped the ending vowel from many of his favorite foods - like “mootzarell,” “calamaar,” “gabbagool,””raviols,” and “peas and baast” (i.e., “peas and pasta”), to recall just a few. I never knew that was a thing that went further than my dad.
Speaking of food, I loved how GH included mention of the meals she ate, though I would have liked more details. In fact, it would have been awesome if Stanley Tucci could have made an appearance or two.
Something gnawed at me throughout the book, but I couldn’t pinpoint the source of my annoyance until GH described a relaxing day in Calabria(?) thusly: “...no imperative to govern us - neither physical beauty nor applied intelligence - is required of us here.” “Implied Intelligence.” That was it – I felt cheated and drowsy every time she waxed intelligent, annoyed that the “applied intelligence” became the reality while reality became the fabrication.
Then she asked why Italian men scratch their crotch when they think, and I kept reading.
Here’s a couple of the pleasant recollections Grizzuti Harrison (GH) summoned. She had me remembering my aunts, two sisters who worked at the same big pharmaceutical company, which, like those women of southern Italy who worked in a factory, they always referred to as “the place.” They (my aunts) even referred to their work friends as “the girls up the place.” Another good memory GH brought to mind was the dropping of vowels from the end of many words, particularly foods. I always laughed when my dad dropped the ending vowel from many of his favorite foods - like “mootzarell,” “calamaar,” “gabbagool,””raviols,” and “peas and baast” (i.e., “peas and pasta”), to recall just a few. I never knew that was a thing that went further than my dad.
Speaking of food, I loved how GH included mention of the meals she ate, though I would have liked more details. In fact, it would have been awesome if Stanley Tucci could have made an appearance or two.
Something gnawed at me throughout the book, but I couldn’t pinpoint the source of my annoyance until GH described a relaxing day in Calabria(?) thusly: “...no imperative to govern us - neither physical beauty nor applied intelligence - is required of us here.” “Implied Intelligence.” That was it – I felt cheated and drowsy every time she waxed intelligent, annoyed that the “applied intelligence” became the reality while reality became the fabrication.
Then she asked why Italian men scratch their crotch when they think, and I kept reading.
March 16, 2025
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison's 1989 Italian Days inspired some of my travels in Italy in the mid-1990s, which was a very different experience than my first trip there in 1983, which was more of an overview of Rome, Venice, and the Amalfi Coast, but nothing really in great depth, though I was certainly tantalized by what I saw to hope to make additional visits.
Her mouthwatering descriptions of her meals, the glorious architecture she viewed, and the extraordinary people she met all led me for the first time to Florence, to its green-striped Duomo, to its shops, markets, and restaurants, and especially to a day trip to the lovely town of San Gimignano.
I had been to Venice once before, but on my second visit there, I visited the Ghetto, where the poorest of Venice's Italian Jews had lived before many were deported in 1943 and 1944. Grizzuti Harrison's section of the Ghetto is very brief, but evocative of what I saw and experienced there roughly 50 years after those terrible times.
There are many other areas in Italy that I have yet to visit, but when I finally get to Puglia, for example, I will re-read the section of the book that covers what sounds like a magical place.
Good travel writing like Grizzuti Harrison's is transporting, and makes even an armchair visit a delight.
Her mouthwatering descriptions of her meals, the glorious architecture she viewed, and the extraordinary people she met all led me for the first time to Florence, to its green-striped Duomo, to its shops, markets, and restaurants, and especially to a day trip to the lovely town of San Gimignano.
I had been to Venice once before, but on my second visit there, I visited the Ghetto, where the poorest of Venice's Italian Jews had lived before many were deported in 1943 and 1944. Grizzuti Harrison's section of the Ghetto is very brief, but evocative of what I saw and experienced there roughly 50 years after those terrible times.
There are many other areas in Italy that I have yet to visit, but when I finally get to Puglia, for example, I will re-read the section of the book that covers what sounds like a magical place.
Good travel writing like Grizzuti Harrison's is transporting, and makes even an armchair visit a delight.
August 12, 2020
I did not finish this book - it was simply not was I was looking for. I wanted to read books about Italy before my trip to figure out where to go and learn some background on what makes sites in those places significant or interesting. Italian Days is Harrison's stream-of-consciousness journal of her trips. She will describe interesting historical points about a place, then launch into random thoughts on a passerby. This book might be nice for someone already familiar with Italy so they can reminisce with Harrison, or when planning a return trip to see what kinds of things were missed. But for me, being unfamiliar with Italy, this was too flowery, wordy, and unfocused.
October 11, 2022
"There are places one comes home to that one has never been to. We are all proprietary toward cities we love. 'Ah, you should have seen her when I loved her!' we say, reciting glories since faded or defiled, trusting her to no one else; that others should know and love her in her present fallen state (for she must fall without our vigilant love) is a species of betrayal."
Italian Days ** Read in Milan, Italy (Sep 2022)
Italian Days ** Read in Milan, Italy (Sep 2022)
February 16, 2018
This book is close to my heart and has brought so much comfort to me over the years. I think this was my 3rd full reading of it (though I return to some of the passages on a regular basis.) Harrison touches on everything I love in this work: art, food, literature, language, geography, culture, and religion, in ways that feel deeply and personally meaningful to me. Highly recommended for lovers of Italy or anyone interested in it's people and culture.
July 28, 2024
I couldn't finish it. I was excited about the details in the first chapter, but then she goes off on these weird twists and turns that don't seem to apply to the story telling of the location she's in. I appreciate she meets humans where they are, raw and real, but there's no closure and just odd one offs that don't connect. Not the kind of travel experience I was hoping for.
May 7, 2018
Lots of meandering and personal stories.
I read other books that were more helpful for traveling to Italy. This one bordered on a personal journal of sorts and gave lots of story lines that I didn’t care to read.
I read other books that were more helpful for traveling to Italy. This one bordered on a personal journal of sorts and gave lots of story lines that I didn’t care to read.
August 20, 2017
Harrison's commentary sears the faint-hearted and soars for braver fellow travellers. My first experience of the Pantheon and the Piazza Navona was made better by her preface.
February 23, 2022
Too much religion!!!!
Read
April 2, 2023Saw this on sale, and it sparked my memory of reading it in 1993 before a three-week trip to Italy. I remember enjoying it.
July 9, 2024
To be fair, I skipped around a lot.
August 7, 2024
This book just did not age well. I attempted to read it in 2024 and I did not feel it provided any insight into Italy in the 1980s.
October 31, 2025
like walking the streets in italy
June 14, 2011
I love this book. Now, would I recommend it? Conditionally, yes. If a wonderful trip to Italy, for you, would be hitting the high spots in Rome and Venice (and how awesome is that?!), you may feel overwhelmed by Grizzuti Harrison's tome. It is very long, and it's very detailed. I'm guessing the reader visits 30+ churches with her in Rome, alone. The book is part travelogue and part "Roots" in Italy.
I found myself mesmerized by both (and I'm just going to call her Barbara and move forward with this). Okay. Barbara's grandparents, maternal and paternal, emigrated from Italy, probably around the turn of the last century. And like most of the immigrants from that time, they were from the desperately poor South. If you speak to the children and grandchildren of these people, most will tell you their families refused to allow them to speak and learn Italian. Imagine living a life so hard, you even try to run away from the language and protect your children from it, like a curse. My maternal grandfather's family was like that; today we aren't even sure of the proper spelling of their last names, or precisely where they were from. "Near Campobasso" (like Barbara's family - and thousands more) is about as close as we come, since that was most likely the nearest city with a railroad stop to take them away from those rugged hills.
I'm going on too long. In a nutshell - Barbara began in fashion-forward Milan, among the wealthy and sophisticated northerners. As she makes her way south, eventually joined by her daughter Anna in Naples, plus a friend and that friend's daughter (also of southern Italian descent)we the focus shifts from observations about architecture and cooking and art and descends into the hot, emotional, rocky land of her ancestors.
It starts feeling very personal, and eventually - almost too much. This is not the land of the Medicis and the popes. It's almost primordial. It's sometimes more than you want to imagine.
Barbara spent her time in Italy in the mid 1980s and the book was published and acclaimed by all in 1989. But even as I read the reviews on the back cover, I wondered if the reviewers really read the whole book. Did they really get it? I'm not so sure. This book can be pretty, charming. As warm and inviting as pots of geraniums posing on the sun-splashed balcony of an ancient stone villa. And this book is gut-wrenching and sad, as we mourn the wrenching divide between the Old Country and the New. How did those mothers let their sons and daughters leave? How bad did it have to be to pray that your children could get out, and forever?
Read this book if you want to spend a lot of time looking at Italy, bello e brutto. (I hope I said that correctly - but it looks like a fitting end to this lengthy review, don't you think?)
I found myself mesmerized by both (and I'm just going to call her Barbara and move forward with this). Okay. Barbara's grandparents, maternal and paternal, emigrated from Italy, probably around the turn of the last century. And like most of the immigrants from that time, they were from the desperately poor South. If you speak to the children and grandchildren of these people, most will tell you their families refused to allow them to speak and learn Italian. Imagine living a life so hard, you even try to run away from the language and protect your children from it, like a curse. My maternal grandfather's family was like that; today we aren't even sure of the proper spelling of their last names, or precisely where they were from. "Near Campobasso" (like Barbara's family - and thousands more) is about as close as we come, since that was most likely the nearest city with a railroad stop to take them away from those rugged hills.
I'm going on too long. In a nutshell - Barbara began in fashion-forward Milan, among the wealthy and sophisticated northerners. As she makes her way south, eventually joined by her daughter Anna in Naples, plus a friend and that friend's daughter (also of southern Italian descent)we the focus shifts from observations about architecture and cooking and art and descends into the hot, emotional, rocky land of her ancestors.
It starts feeling very personal, and eventually - almost too much. This is not the land of the Medicis and the popes. It's almost primordial. It's sometimes more than you want to imagine.
Barbara spent her time in Italy in the mid 1980s and the book was published and acclaimed by all in 1989. But even as I read the reviews on the back cover, I wondered if the reviewers really read the whole book. Did they really get it? I'm not so sure. This book can be pretty, charming. As warm and inviting as pots of geraniums posing on the sun-splashed balcony of an ancient stone villa. And this book is gut-wrenching and sad, as we mourn the wrenching divide between the Old Country and the New. How did those mothers let their sons and daughters leave? How bad did it have to be to pray that your children could get out, and forever?
Read this book if you want to spend a lot of time looking at Italy, bello e brutto. (I hope I said that correctly - but it looks like a fitting end to this lengthy review, don't you think?)
February 9, 2012
Where to start on this wonderful book? It is so much more than a travel memoir. I love Grizzuti's prose, her manner of expressing herself. She doesn't just describe what she is seeing but the history behind the sculpture, the piazza, the place. Also what she is feeling.
She will give you a new slant on something famous and obviously being well read she will come up with a marvellous quote from Keats, James, Stendhal, even Iris Origo for instance; a writer I have now marked down to read.
From reading this book I now have a list of places I want to visit in Italy including: Raphael's Tomb, Rome; the Gardens of St Augustine,Capri; Alberobello with the funny trulli houses and Scanno, a beautiful cobbled medieval village in the south to name just a few.
My only complaint concerning Italian Days would be that the section on Rome is too long, mainly because it was the author's favourite place and whilst reading this part of the book I did wonder why I had taken time out of my own writing to read such a long travel book. Shortly towards the end I was rewarded with these marvellous words of Grizzuti's. It will be the opening quote for my new novel and it is a perfect example of why I felt at home with this marvellous writer:
"Does one carry landcape in one's body, in one's genes?"
She will give you a new slant on something famous and obviously being well read she will come up with a marvellous quote from Keats, James, Stendhal, even Iris Origo for instance; a writer I have now marked down to read.
From reading this book I now have a list of places I want to visit in Italy including: Raphael's Tomb, Rome; the Gardens of St Augustine,Capri; Alberobello with the funny trulli houses and Scanno, a beautiful cobbled medieval village in the south to name just a few.
My only complaint concerning Italian Days would be that the section on Rome is too long, mainly because it was the author's favourite place and whilst reading this part of the book I did wonder why I had taken time out of my own writing to read such a long travel book. Shortly towards the end I was rewarded with these marvellous words of Grizzuti's. It will be the opening quote for my new novel and it is a perfect example of why I felt at home with this marvellous writer:
"Does one carry landcape in one's body, in one's genes?"
October 25, 2018
Not overly impressed with this novel. It exists as a melting pot of part travelogue, part history book, part discussion of art and religion, and part receipe book. A very dense read (as an oversized paperback), it was a struggle to get through even ten pages at a time. While I loved the descriptions of different foods and meals, the author had an annoying habit of talking in tangents. For example, she would have three paragraphs on the architecture of some church then all of sudden a random sentence that would read something like, "I remember eating yellow apples with my father under a tree in the summer", thoughts not even remotely related to her topic at hand. This would happen repeatedly and was an annoyance in her writing style. I also felt like one needed a map in hand while reading her book because she describes cities via the many landmarks/streets or in terms of Venice, waterways, but usually they are very obscure and you have no idea where exactly she is directing the reader. Overall, I'd give this one a miss unless you really are into reading about ancient Italian architecture.
June 18, 2015
Only read the part about Rome in preparation of a trip. Harrison has a keen eye for detail and she writes well. There is a good balance of history, research, speculation, and even gossip, so her travels really come alive. The Rome section discusses Roman and recent history mostly. She wanders on many roads, sometimes driving, sometimes walking, she sits in many cafes, and she certainly visits many, many churches. Apart from the religious stuff, her musings are entertaining and timeless, and the sidekicks (her friends, who all seems to be mildly crazy) add unexpected flavor. Maybe a tad bit too much Catholic this and Catholic that for my taste, but perhaps unavoidable when reading about Rome. It's also interesting to see how things were in the 80s. I will certainly be looking to see if some of the places Harrison writes about are still standing, so to speak (though in Rome, things stand, even if ruins, it seems).
April 10, 2012
I wanted to love this book, but could not read past the first 40 pages. I felt as though I were reading in ADD. The author's thoughts are jumpy at best, incohesive and divergent. I actually agreed with most of her perceptions of Milan, but the writing style was simply frustrating. Thinking this might be something found only at the start of the book, I jumped to the Florence section and found the same difficulties.[return][return]It was also disconcerting that her translations of Italian were incorrect (at least in the sections I read). Literal translations do not match the actual meaning of many words and phrases in Italian. Literal translations leave out the expression and emotion of the people and life of Italy. There are few books I haven't been able to read. Unfortunately this is one of them.
September 7, 2015
Although maybe slightly dated at this point, as it was written in 1989 this is a great book to read prior to taking a multi-city tour of Italy! I went on my term abroad there and reading this book took me back - as the author visited pretty much all the cities that I did. She is sort of obsessed with Rome and the largest section about how she lived there for a few months. Sometimes she goes on weird tangents that could have been edited down but overall great mix of people watching, Italian history, and just general musings on the Italian life. Perhaps I was just tired of reading this but I felt like it fell apart a little once she left Rome and I had to start skimming. The narrator was more scattered and once her daughter came on to the scene, the book became like a love poem. The author was seriously obsessed with her daughter!
September 24, 2011
To truly connect with this one I think you need to be as much a fan of Barbara as of Italy. Which I SORT of am--which doesn't explain why I GAVE my copy to an acquaintance whose parents were about to travel abroad. I must've had some sort of agenda at the time; now the acquaintance is long gone from my life, and i just wish I had my book back. I WILL buy another copy...which in itself is a great review. It's not about pictures--it's about words. Cozily, caustically, comically, cleverly, WONDERFULLY woven words.
February 22, 2008
Travel writing at it's best in my opinion-
February 19, 2008
The first part, particularly the first chapter, I loved. Toward the end her introspective analysis was beginning to weigh me down.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews