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

"Prepare to dive!" Open this underwater exploration guide and journey to the darkest depths of the oceans. Water covers almost three-fourths of our planers surface, yet many of us have never seen what lies far beneath the waves. Filled with intriguing facts and colorful illustrations, this book examines the history and science of diving, the different ocean zones, and the future of undersea research. Join Gail Gibbons, the master of children's nonfiction, as she takes us 36,000 feet below the surface to reveal the fascinating and incredible life forms that lurk in the deep, dark sea.

About this title

Review:

There are two kinds of travel narrators: those who travel to write and those who land in a place and pick up a pen. In Pasquale's Nose, Michael Rips is the latter, having landed in the Etruscan village of Sutri near Rome, the accident of an artist wife with a mission though Rips seems to have none.

Rips, a lawyer from the Midwest of America, appears to look for nothing more than what he can see through the steam rising from his coffee cup when seated at an outdoor café table. The result is an uneven series of occasionally stunning vignettes of the curious people who pass by his field of vision. It is an unlikely writing style for an American in Italy, more reminiscent of a distanced Victorian observer of another culture than an exuberant Frances Mayes in Under the Tuscan Sun or the freshness of Annie Hawes in Extra Virgin.

Rips' own personality, in all its neuroses, is the backbone to the daily doodles that introduce the reader to the village. The elegant café owner Dina Guidi, the inbred Mezzadonna family, the blind boot-maker and the titled Pasquale with a penchant for cars and for smelling feet are created with varying detail.

The style veers toward a movie script outline where characters have great potential and all will be revealed before the camera. This first-time author, who would be a study in eccentricity in his own right, is on the right path when he blends observation with his version of a morality tale. --Kathleen Buckley

Book Description:

A sharply flavoured, eccentric and entertaining travel memoir which does for the southern Italian town of Sutri what Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil did for Savannah (without the murder) - makes you want to go straight there, or better still stay at home and read about it!

About this edition

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