Book review - A House in Sicily

It's pretty hot down here in Calabria. Poor bel fidanzato is the only person not on holidays. Since returning from Scotland I have been to the beach a few times but always go in the afternoon as it is just too hot to go for the entire day. I like going to the beach and always take a book with me as it gets rather tedious just sitting around all afternoon people watching. However I always carefully choose my beach books - I don't choose something light-hearted, I don't take an intriguing thriller...I take a book that I don't really care for so that is it gets wet/ruined I won't care. So not always the best books for a book review!

I often buy English books on the internet so it's never guaranteed I'll enjoy them. Loving Italy as I do, I like reading books about Italy - which some people think is strange as I live here and all. My latest beach read was A House in Sicily - Daphne Phelps. 

This book originally caught my attention as it is a true story set in Taormina, Sicily which is where I lived a few years ago. The author, Daphne was a British woman and the book is based around a beautiful villa which her uncle, Robert Hawthorn Kitson built in Taormina since he had fallen in love with the mild climate and picturesque views of Mount Etna. When she first mentioned the name of the villa, Casa Cuseni, I had no idea which villa she was talking about. I am no means an expert on Taormina, but I did work in the tourist industry so knew somewhat about local sites and attractions. She doesn't describe very well where the house is, and the photos in the book are of the guests or the garden rather then the house itself. It was only after internet searches that I realised it was the villa I walked past everyday as it was down the road from my apartment.

In 1948 while the world was still recovering from the war, her uncle died and the house went to the aunt's reader. Being an older woman with no interest in travelling to Sicily to see this house, she asked her niece, Daphne to go...and thus begins the readers love affair with Taormina. I can all to well understand what it means to have a love affair with Taormina and I looked forward to reading this book but just a few pages in it was annoying me. Daphne writes about the villa, her lack of money to restore it in the post-war era and her decision to open her doors to artists, writers etc...and have paying guests help maintain the villa. She gets side-tracked though and each chapter is dedicated to someone who visited the villa (such as Ronald Dahl not that she knew who he was) or someone who worked at the villa. There is a chapter on her meeting the head of the local Mafia, a chapter on some poor gardener who worked for her, a very long chapter about this strange artist friend and his herd of animals...

I was skipping chapters left, right and centre, and only forced myself to read them when my afternoon at the beach was but young and I had a lot of time to kill. Sadly I have to say this book had such potential - it is set in Taormina but far, far to much focus is given to the people she met along the way and not enough about her or her actual life in Taormina. An ok beach read but nothing to get excited about (in my opinion anyway.)

Christ stopped at Eboli...but we didn't!

Have you read "Christ stopped at Eboli" by Carlo Levi? If you haven't I would highly recommend it. This book is an amazing biography of Levi - a northern Italian doctor, painter and writer who was forced to live in political exile in a small town in Lucania, which is now called Basilicata. He was sent there for his openly anti-fascist views and his biography tells of his experience living within this malaria ridden district and how in such a poor, desolate town he met some of the most amazingly strong and kind people.

Levi writes in his novel that it seems that Christ really did stop at Eboli (which is a town in the province of Salerno) because it was such a different Italy from the Italy he came from. Back in the day wealthy Italians did not travel much further south then Rome and most certainly very few would have had reason to enter the region of Basilicata. It was the land that time forgot. With limited access to health care, education - even clean running water, Levi was shocked and humbled by his experience here.

One town which is mentioned in his novel is the now rather famous Matera. Matera's fame on the tourist map has been steadily building since Mel Gibson's film, "The Passions of the Christ" which I have yet to see. This town is one of the most unique places you will ever see and rightly so it is now a UNESCO site.



When Levi visited Matera, the poorest of the towns people used to live in the sassi which are cave dwellings dating back to the prehistoric settlement. The sassi houses are literally dug into the rock and are not houses as such, but large (and not so large) caves which used to see both humans and animals living together in more often then not windowless holes. You can imagine the conditions which Levi would have seen! The town which is basically built entirely of rock was a cess pit of disease and in the 1950s (when the sassi were full of about 16,000 poverty stricken inhabitants) the Italian government had to forcefully relocate most of the population to areas of the developing modern city.



Bel ragazzo and I went to Matera in October and it was an overwhelming site. I had always wanted to visit Matera and was so excited that we finally had a chance to go. We went for work. (Well bel ragazzo did and I just tagged along.) We had to inspect a new 5 star de luxe "hotel" which is made up of some of the oldest sassi.





If you have never been to Matera then I would say you definately have to put it on your list of places to go. Look at more of our pictures below and see for yourself!









If you don't want to see a photo of bel ragazzo giving me a bacio then close your eyes now!!

Buying English books

I just ordered a nice bunch of books on www.amazon.co.uk so hope to have them ready and waiting for me when I get to Malito next week. If you live in Europe and want to buy books in English then it is much better to use the British site then the American one. I mostly buy the used books which you can get from 0.01p (obviously you pay in pounds) and the postage is 3.94 per book. I use amazon all the time and have found it much cheaper then buying an English language book from a book shop.

So I hope to have some book reviews coming too. I have not had anything to read for a while and I miss reading!




(These photos have no relevance to books, but Nikita our new Nikon took these photos during our afternoon walk the other day.)

See Naples and Die by Penelope Green - review

I have just finished reading See Naples and Die by Penelope Green who is an Australian author now living on an island off the coast of Naples (according to the inside cover of her latest novel.) You may have heard of or even read her first novel, When in Rome - Chasing La Dolce Vita although I know the books are hard to get a hold of since they are only published in Australia. I obviously have my Australian connections and got the first copy for a few dollars off ebay when I was last in Australia, and my twin sister bought the latest novel yet again for me and rather then shipping it over sent it with mum and dad.


I felt strongly that I had to write a review as I am truely dissapointed with the second novel. The first one is a light hearted, sweet book all about an Australian girl moving to Rome for the first time. An easy to read novel it did not cause me to skip too many pages, however perhaps that was due to the fact that it was my first year in Rome when I first read the book, perhaps it is because I too am an Australian girl living on the other side of the world, or perhaps it is because the first book is well written in a light hearted fashion...who knows... All I can say is that I love to read, but I hate reading stupid, time wasting books that leave me skipping page after page trying to get myself interested. Sadly this is what happened with See Naple and Die.

It took me a few hours to read the book as I skipped through most of the boring parts (which are many.) She spends pages on the history of Naples but tells the tales in a boring fashion. One minute the book is a girly novel about life and love, and the next minute it is some boring history lesson. She also spends way too many pages on her obsession with the Camorra and the bleakness of Napoli. Penelope had only lived one year in Napoli which is the time her book is based, however she makes herself out to be some expert of the way of life, and leads us to believe she has delved into the souls of the locals, uncovered their truths about the 'Napoli' that the tourists never see. Lastly Penelope Green appears to be confused as to what genre her book would be, so she decided to make it a bit of everything...it really was for me a confusing read as she goes really indepth into some aspects and then she lightly dusts over other parts. The book is a little like ' I ate lunch here, then I went there, and then I went here...' wham bham whilst 10 pages talk about some Mafia story.

I would recommend buying this book only if you have a twin sister in Australia who can buy it for next to nothing on ebay.