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Firenze
Before the Euro, before smartphones, before Amanda Knox, Kevin headed to Florence to study abroad armed only with a skateboard and a poor grasp of the Italian language. What follows is a deadpan comedy about culture shock, family baggage, and growing up by accident in a foreign country.
Kevin’s roommate is annoying, the city is confusing, and he’s not entirely sure why he’s there—other than to get away from home. There are weird Germans, sorority girls, a three-wheeled Ape, Hare Krishnas, Buddhists, and a slow-burning crush on his dad’s girlfriend’s daughter. He fumbles through Italian class, group tours, and long afternoons wandering streets with names he can’t pronounce. And perhaps dropping acid in the Vatican wasn’t the smartest move?
The third installment of a loose trilogy, Firenze is like Mountain View meets Kato meets An Idiot Abroad. Or a snarky Before Sunrise. For anyone who ever visited Europe with nothing but a Eurail pass and a dogeared copy of Let’s Go, this one’s for you.
Kevin’s roommate is annoying, the city is confusing, and he’s not entirely sure why he’s there—other than to get away from home. There are weird Germans, sorority girls, a three-wheeled Ape, Hare Krishnas, Buddhists, and a slow-burning crush on his dad’s girlfriend’s daughter. He fumbles through Italian class, group tours, and long afternoons wandering streets with names he can’t pronounce. And perhaps dropping acid in the Vatican wasn’t the smartest move?
The third installment of a loose trilogy, Firenze is like Mountain View meets Kato meets An Idiot Abroad. Or a snarky Before Sunrise. For anyone who ever visited Europe with nothing but a Eurail pass and a dogeared copy of Let’s Go, this one’s for you.
213 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 15, 2025
2 people are currently reading
26 people want to read
About the author
Otis West
4 books17 followersOtis West spent his formative years in Northern California and currently resides in the Pacific Northwest. A proud Gen Xer, he still loves punk rock, carburetors, and old Jim Jarmusch movies.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 28, 2025
ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.
This is my third time dipping my toe into the mind of Otis West, and once again, he doesn't disappoint—though Firenze stands apart from his previous works with a noticeably different voice.
We follow Kevin, a college student spending a semester abroad in Florence, Italy. From the beginning, Kevin is not the kind of character I would gravitate toward in real life. He's dismissive, entitled, and often cruel in a way that feels both intentional and defensive. He seems determined to resist every ounce of beauty and meaning in the world around him. Rather than immersing himself in the rich culture he’s surrounded by, he clings to a hollow sense of detachment and superiority.
For much of the novel, it feels like Kevin is stuck—and in many ways, he is. There’s a frustrating lack of apparent growth. But then, subtly, West starts to reveal the quiet shifts beneath the surface. Small moments, overlooked at first, begin to accumulate. It’s like watching the first few flakes of a snowball before it begins to roll. By the end, Kevin may not be transformed, but there’s a glimmer of something—of change, of possibility—that suggests he could be.
Firenze is a character study in restraint. If you're expecting a dramatic arc or a redemptive flourish, this may not be the book for you. But if you're willing to sit with a flawed narrator and observe the quiet beats of potential transformation, there's a reward in the patience.
Otis West continues to challenge the reader’s expectations, and I appreciate that. This one lingers.
This is my third time dipping my toe into the mind of Otis West, and once again, he doesn't disappoint—though Firenze stands apart from his previous works with a noticeably different voice.
We follow Kevin, a college student spending a semester abroad in Florence, Italy. From the beginning, Kevin is not the kind of character I would gravitate toward in real life. He's dismissive, entitled, and often cruel in a way that feels both intentional and defensive. He seems determined to resist every ounce of beauty and meaning in the world around him. Rather than immersing himself in the rich culture he’s surrounded by, he clings to a hollow sense of detachment and superiority.
For much of the novel, it feels like Kevin is stuck—and in many ways, he is. There’s a frustrating lack of apparent growth. But then, subtly, West starts to reveal the quiet shifts beneath the surface. Small moments, overlooked at first, begin to accumulate. It’s like watching the first few flakes of a snowball before it begins to roll. By the end, Kevin may not be transformed, but there’s a glimmer of something—of change, of possibility—that suggests he could be.
Firenze is a character study in restraint. If you're expecting a dramatic arc or a redemptive flourish, this may not be the book for you. But if you're willing to sit with a flawed narrator and observe the quiet beats of potential transformation, there's a reward in the patience.
Otis West continues to challenge the reader’s expectations, and I appreciate that. This one lingers.
August 24, 2025
There's something to be said for a novel that makes you want to quit reading in the first chapter, only to leave you genuinely moved by its conclusion. This compact story follows an American college student navigating a semester abroad in Europe, and it's both a product of its time and a surprisingly nuanced character study.
The protagonist arrives as exactly the kind of person you'd cross the street to avoid—entitled, dismissive, and armed with the casual cruelty that defined a particular strain of American masculinity in that era. His running commentary on everything from local customs to fellow travelers initially reads like the worst kind of cultural imperialism, complete with language that will make modern readers wince.
But here's where the author shows real skill: what begins as an seemingly unreflective voice gradually reveals itself to be anything but. The narrative works on multiple levels, using the protagonist's surface-level observations to expose deeper truths about isolation, cultural discomfort, and the particular vulnerability of young men who've never had their worldview challenged.
The pacing is relentless—this is the kind of book you'll devour in an afternoon—but the brevity works in its favor. There's no time for the story to lose momentum or for readers to lose patience with the narrator's initial abrasiveness. Instead, you're carried along by prose that captures both the excitement and disorientation of being young and far from home in an era before the internet flattened cultural differences.
What emerges is a surprisingly tender portrait of growth and self-recognition, wrapped in the sharp edges of period-appropriate authenticity. It's a time capsule that doesn't romanticize its era but instead uses its less palatable elements to illuminate something universal about coming of age. By the final pages, you may find yourself feeling unexpectedly protective of a character who initially seemed beyond redemption.
Not for everyone, but for readers willing to trust the journey, it's a rewarding exploration of how travel—real travel, the kind that unsettles rather than confirms—can crack open even the most resistant personalities.
The protagonist arrives as exactly the kind of person you'd cross the street to avoid—entitled, dismissive, and armed with the casual cruelty that defined a particular strain of American masculinity in that era. His running commentary on everything from local customs to fellow travelers initially reads like the worst kind of cultural imperialism, complete with language that will make modern readers wince.
But here's where the author shows real skill: what begins as an seemingly unreflective voice gradually reveals itself to be anything but. The narrative works on multiple levels, using the protagonist's surface-level observations to expose deeper truths about isolation, cultural discomfort, and the particular vulnerability of young men who've never had their worldview challenged.
The pacing is relentless—this is the kind of book you'll devour in an afternoon—but the brevity works in its favor. There's no time for the story to lose momentum or for readers to lose patience with the narrator's initial abrasiveness. Instead, you're carried along by prose that captures both the excitement and disorientation of being young and far from home in an era before the internet flattened cultural differences.
What emerges is a surprisingly tender portrait of growth and self-recognition, wrapped in the sharp edges of period-appropriate authenticity. It's a time capsule that doesn't romanticize its era but instead uses its less palatable elements to illuminate something universal about coming of age. By the final pages, you may find yourself feeling unexpectedly protective of a character who initially seemed beyond redemption.
Not for everyone, but for readers willing to trust the journey, it's a rewarding exploration of how travel—real travel, the kind that unsettles rather than confirms—can crack open even the most resistant personalities.
August 13, 2025
Firenze
By Otis West
This is so short and so propulsive that I read it in one sitting. At first I worried I wasn't going to get along with it because the narrative voice is so stroppy and immature, that of an American male Gen Xer on his semester abroad in the late 1980s. He is every white American lad you could ever meet at that time, who finds himself on a trip to Florence, the most amazing place for a study abroad gig, yet can only summons derision for everything around him, the chicks, the assholes, the dorks, the retards (YES, I was about to DNF but realised the self awareness just in time, calmed down, kept my hair on and continued), the stupid locals who couldn't understand his non Italian, the Eurotrash who weren't American enough, the clothing style, the food (what???), the closing time of shops, the bathroom fixtures, the cobbles that hobbled his skateboarding intentions. Everything is a pain in the ass when you cannot imagine anything outside your own sphere of knowledge.
But once I cooled my jets over the liberal peppering of the R word throughout the book, I found this really quite funny. It's like being love bombed by references to a time and place that is both familiar and lost.
Kevin starts out as someone I would have maintained a polite distance from at that age, but by the end, I just wanted to wrap him up and protect him from himself.
This is such a layered little novel that contains much more than you'd think at first glance. It speaks of a time when the world was less homogenised, and a different country might as well have been a different planet.
Highly recommend.
Publication date: 15th September 2025
Thanks to #Netgalley and #VictoryEditing for providing an ARC for review purposes
By Otis West
This is so short and so propulsive that I read it in one sitting. At first I worried I wasn't going to get along with it because the narrative voice is so stroppy and immature, that of an American male Gen Xer on his semester abroad in the late 1980s. He is every white American lad you could ever meet at that time, who finds himself on a trip to Florence, the most amazing place for a study abroad gig, yet can only summons derision for everything around him, the chicks, the assholes, the dorks, the retards (YES, I was about to DNF but realised the self awareness just in time, calmed down, kept my hair on and continued), the stupid locals who couldn't understand his non Italian, the Eurotrash who weren't American enough, the clothing style, the food (what???), the closing time of shops, the bathroom fixtures, the cobbles that hobbled his skateboarding intentions. Everything is a pain in the ass when you cannot imagine anything outside your own sphere of knowledge.
But once I cooled my jets over the liberal peppering of the R word throughout the book, I found this really quite funny. It's like being love bombed by references to a time and place that is both familiar and lost.
Kevin starts out as someone I would have maintained a polite distance from at that age, but by the end, I just wanted to wrap him up and protect him from himself.
This is such a layered little novel that contains much more than you'd think at first glance. It speaks of a time when the world was less homogenised, and a different country might as well have been a different planet.
Highly recommend.
Publication date: 15th September 2025
Thanks to #Netgalley and #VictoryEditing for providing an ARC for review purposes
March 25, 2026
I really enjoyed this one. On the surface, Firenze is a quiet little story about a cynical, skateboarding Gen-Xer studying abroad in Florence in the late 80s. It has all the charm of a low-budget indie movie from that time period with snarky, understated dialog, a bit of humor, and a thin meandering thread of a plot. We follow Kevin, the grumpy main character, as he wanders the cobblestoned streets of 1980s Florence at an unhurried, even bored, pace. He and the supporting characters feel like real, complete people, and as off-putting and frustrating as Kevin can be, he grew on me, and by the end I was rooting for him.
On a deeper level, West perfectly captured a certain flavor of the study abroad experience (one that I recognize from my own semester in Florence decades ago): A privileged American kid is given this once in a lifetime opportunity, yet can’t seem to get out of his own way, can’t quite find a rhythm, and ends up having a generally crummy time. Kevin doesn’t exactly squander the opportunity, but he does recognize early on that immersing himself into Florentine culture is probably impossible, and certainly not worth the effort. In theory, students abroad are meant to get a months-long taste of life in a foreign country, yet they find themselves instead in more of a cruise ship experience surrounded by this micro-economy that caters to the wants and needs of young Americans with money to spend, not necessarily the locals. It’s almost impossible for a well-meaning 20 year old to punch through that mess, and a grumpy kid like Kevin doesn’t bother trying.
I would have still enjoyed Firenze had I not studied abroad in Florence and had I not seen so much of my younger self in Kevin (although those parallels made for a powerful reading experience that unearthed lots of memories, both painful and joyful). I would have enjoyed it anyway because I like small, quirky stories. I like punk rock aesthetics and a subversive tone. And I love a story where the setting becomes a character itself, which West has absolutely achieved here with his descriptions of Florence.
On a deeper level, West perfectly captured a certain flavor of the study abroad experience (one that I recognize from my own semester in Florence decades ago): A privileged American kid is given this once in a lifetime opportunity, yet can’t seem to get out of his own way, can’t quite find a rhythm, and ends up having a generally crummy time. Kevin doesn’t exactly squander the opportunity, but he does recognize early on that immersing himself into Florentine culture is probably impossible, and certainly not worth the effort. In theory, students abroad are meant to get a months-long taste of life in a foreign country, yet they find themselves instead in more of a cruise ship experience surrounded by this micro-economy that caters to the wants and needs of young Americans with money to spend, not necessarily the locals. It’s almost impossible for a well-meaning 20 year old to punch through that mess, and a grumpy kid like Kevin doesn’t bother trying.
I would have still enjoyed Firenze had I not studied abroad in Florence and had I not seen so much of my younger self in Kevin (although those parallels made for a powerful reading experience that unearthed lots of memories, both painful and joyful). I would have enjoyed it anyway because I like small, quirky stories. I like punk rock aesthetics and a subversive tone. And I love a story where the setting becomes a character itself, which West has absolutely achieved here with his descriptions of Florence.
September 15, 2025
This is the third of a trio of books from Otis West, and another gem.
The protagonist is an uninspired American spending a term "studying" abroad in Florence, Italy in the late 1980s. A snarky young man who's uninterested in his classes or his classmates freestyles his way around Firenze, trying his best to make sense of his surroundings and himself.
West brings an authenticity to the voice of the protagonist and brings us to a time and a place that is both nostalgic yet unfamiliar all at once. The dialogue is superb and the characters nuanced.
As a guy who studied abroad myself in Florence in the late 80s, I loved the detailed accuracy, which took me right back to a special moment in time.
Can for sure recommend Firenze as a great capstone to Mountain View and Kato which together offer a funny if melancholy remembrance of an ode to a lost decade.
The protagonist is an uninspired American spending a term "studying" abroad in Florence, Italy in the late 1980s. A snarky young man who's uninterested in his classes or his classmates freestyles his way around Firenze, trying his best to make sense of his surroundings and himself.
West brings an authenticity to the voice of the protagonist and brings us to a time and a place that is both nostalgic yet unfamiliar all at once. The dialogue is superb and the characters nuanced.
As a guy who studied abroad myself in Florence in the late 80s, I loved the detailed accuracy, which took me right back to a special moment in time.
Can for sure recommend Firenze as a great capstone to Mountain View and Kato which together offer a funny if melancholy remembrance of an ode to a lost decade.
November 19, 2025
I was so disappointed by this book! A young man is given the chance of a lifetime to spend a semester at school in Florence, Italy. What a dream! Unfortunately, the main character turned out to be one of the biggest jerks that I have ever read about. Absolutely no interest in learning, he wasted his time skateboarding, getting high (dropping acid in the Vatican, what a jerk), ditching school, alienating fellow students and pretty much anyone he encounters. An absolute waste of a golden opportunity. I know that some of the other reviewers have commented on how the main character has grown by the end of the book, but I just don't see it.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews