Italian Days

Rating:
Summary: a lovable but uneven and poorly edited book
Review: Too many elipses here--not the ones you use to edit quotations, though there are plenty of those too- but the ones poor writers use as a sort of gesture to ineffability, the elusiveness of some particular moment. They are the written equivalent of a sigh and an outstretched hand grasping at empty air, and just about as sincere. Why didn't her editor cut this and similar crap out and help give some shape to a book that is about 65% brilliant, the sort of bravura performance any writer would envy. I couldn't decide between three or four stars for this book. Perhaps three stars with a fourth one in parentheses might have been best. I have great enthusiasm for Italian Days--its reflectiveness, its lyricism, its humor--but there are long sections that are self-conscious, affected, and just careless (the "scent of oleanders?"--they have no scent--poetic license is a myth, language is at its most evocative when it is most accurate). Subjectivity is dandy in travel writing but it needs, paradoxically, to be presented objectively: I am happy to see Italy through her eyes, but she regularly interrupts some of her best moments not to let us see things as she sees them, but rather to have us watch her while she is watching Italy (or is she just watching herself? sections read like really bad Proust). I love this book enough to wish that it had been much better. I love it enough to give it as a gift and then apologize for my bad taste in loving it. With greater discipline, this could have been just about the equal of any travel book ever written on Italy, a large claim, but a defensible one, and yet as it stands it is just one more good, fun Italy book. Somehow, given the author's talent, that doesn't seem to be enough.

Rating:
Summary: So great to have it back in print!
Review: What a treat to have this marvelous book back in print! Ms. Harrison writes so beautifully about about a place she loves dearly and knows so well. I have a long list of friends I've wanted to give this to, and now I can. Highly recommended.