What do you think?
Rate this book
Bus 64 - Roma
Rome's notoriously crowded BUS 64 crawls from the Vatican, through the historic center, to Stazione Termini... Crammed inside are the priest, butcher, tourist, gypsy, secretary, business tycoon, homeless schizophrenic, African immigrant... Teeming with the thoughts, dreams and passions of modern Romans, and the sights, sounds, and smells of the Eternal City, the 49 stories in BUS 64 continually shift gears between elegy, satire, whimsy, shocking realism, fable, farce and more... each style riveting in its quite different way. As the loaded bus plods on, readers will catch whiffs of authors ranging from Boccaccio to Steinbeck, Henry Miller to Hans Christian Andersen... all fused in a mature literary voice all its own. Filled with wit and acute perceptions - emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual - this high-spirited portrait of modern Rome has got edge, heart, guts, and verbal artistry. Above all, it has the FEEL of Rome. If you know and love Rome, BUS 64 will delight you. And if you haven't been there, a ride through this book is almost as good as a visit!
284 pages, Paperback
First published October 2, 2014
6 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 10, 2015
This collection of 48 short stories is by far the best self-published book I have read to date. The quality of writing is inspiring and on par with award-winning literary short-story collections. The appeal for Italophiles is that the author brings Rome, Italy, and Italians to life for the reader, with literary skill and a deep understanding of the human heart.
After just the first few paragraphs, I felt like I was in strong, capable, literary arms. I love the conversational yet authoritative tone, and all the local lore, history, humor, erudition, psychological understanding, and heart that enrich the stories about people, not caricatures, and about daily life in Rome.
Have you read The Canterbury Tales, or The Decameron? This is a modern-day version written with Kurt Vonnegut-esque wit, with the characters mingling and showing their best and worst sides to our omniscient narrator, and through him, to us.
With Chekovian psychological subtlety, the author helps us explore Rome's and the characters' sights, visitors, smells, frailties, passions, sins, rigid thoughts, biases, bowels, dreams, sins, goals and mortality. He exposes to us the characters' various world views.
There is much humor to lighten the tales that roam "...Rome's video-game streets..." but it is the author's way with words, his ability to turn a phrase, that is the greatest pleasure on this journey from the Vatican to the Stazione Termini.
Characters, once introduced in their own stories, sometimes outside of the bus, return within stories about other passengers. By the end of the collection, we have become part of a small community of players, acting and interacting on the author's mobile stage: Bus 64.
Some themes connect the stories, such as the recurring sense of time passing, eras changing, cultures clashing, personalities exerting their uniqueness to the frustration of other characters.
If you enjoy reading quality, polished, moving, expert, psychologically astute writing, then Bus 64 - Roma is the book for you. Take your time with the stories. Embrace the diverse characters. I promise you that by the end of the collection, you will feel that you have been a passenger on Bus 64, and that you have met and known several dozen Romans and visitors to Rome. Travel virtually to the Caput Mundi.
Please read my full and illustrated review at Italophile Book Reviews.
http://italophilebookreviews.blogspot...
After just the first few paragraphs, I felt like I was in strong, capable, literary arms. I love the conversational yet authoritative tone, and all the local lore, history, humor, erudition, psychological understanding, and heart that enrich the stories about people, not caricatures, and about daily life in Rome.
Have you read The Canterbury Tales, or The Decameron? This is a modern-day version written with Kurt Vonnegut-esque wit, with the characters mingling and showing their best and worst sides to our omniscient narrator, and through him, to us.
With Chekovian psychological subtlety, the author helps us explore Rome's and the characters' sights, visitors, smells, frailties, passions, sins, rigid thoughts, biases, bowels, dreams, sins, goals and mortality. He exposes to us the characters' various world views.
There is much humor to lighten the tales that roam "...Rome's video-game streets..." but it is the author's way with words, his ability to turn a phrase, that is the greatest pleasure on this journey from the Vatican to the Stazione Termini.
Characters, once introduced in their own stories, sometimes outside of the bus, return within stories about other passengers. By the end of the collection, we have become part of a small community of players, acting and interacting on the author's mobile stage: Bus 64.
Some themes connect the stories, such as the recurring sense of time passing, eras changing, cultures clashing, personalities exerting their uniqueness to the frustration of other characters.
If you enjoy reading quality, polished, moving, expert, psychologically astute writing, then Bus 64 - Roma is the book for you. Take your time with the stories. Embrace the diverse characters. I promise you that by the end of the collection, you will feel that you have been a passenger on Bus 64, and that you have met and known several dozen Romans and visitors to Rome. Travel virtually to the Caput Mundi.
Please read my full and illustrated review at Italophile Book Reviews.
http://italophilebookreviews.blogspot...
Displaying 1 of 1 review