Pasquale's Nose: Idle Days in an Italian Town - Softcover

Rips, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316748641 ISBN 13: 9780316748643

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2002

Synopsis

Hailed for its quirkiness and charm, this book tells the story of a New York City lawyer who runs away to a small Etruscan village with his wife and baby and discovers a community of eccentrics who make them feel right at home.

About this title

Review:

In this lively book, an American expatriate tries to make a new home in a small Italian city famous for its clannish ways. He succeeds in many ways, but not without plenty of gaffes and cultural misinterpretations--all of which make Michael Rips's memoir that much funnier.

"If you live in Sutri for a hundred years, you won't have a friend; if you live in Sutri for five hundred years, you'll have a friend, but you'll regret it." So runs a proverb from the Tuscan city in which Rips, a sometime attorney and full-time student of the good life, sets his narrative, a place that defies guidebook description and most of the rules of logic. There, a first-class idler in a town where no one is in much of a hurry, he encounters such figures as a diviner who heals sick tractors by touch; a Calabrian outsider who gauges people by the smell of their feet; a chef whose favorite dish is porcupine; and an illiterate postman, plus a bewildering array of secrets and strange encounters that test the innocence of our innocent abroad.

Tinged with the bittersweet, Rips's extraordinary memoir will please Italian and armchair travelers alike. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

Michael Rips is a fifth-generation Nebraska native. He currently practices criminal litigation in New York City. Pasquale's Nose is his first book.

About this edition

• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0316748641
• ISBN 13: 9780316748643
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224