A refreshing antidote to the saccharine charms of Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence & Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun, this is the quirky & hilarious memoir of a criminal lawyer who gives up his New York practise to spend a year in the Etruscan town of Sutri, near Rome, where he moves
- reluctantly
- with his artist wife & baby. Himself something of an eccentric from a bizarre Nebraskan family, he has spent his adult life living in hotels; & in Sutri, he heads straight for the caf- in the main square. From there he observes the baroque events of small-town life, conjures up a cast of Italian eccentrics (including Pasquale & his hypersensitive organ of smell), & relishes the weirdness & the wonder of Sutri's history, folklore, architecture & above all its food
- particularly the notorious 'fagioli regina' (beans in a tomato & pig skin sauce) & the annual Bean Festival. Part of the delight of reading this memoir is that it not only evokes the sights & smells of an ancient & little-known town in Southern Italy, & brings its people to extraordinary life, but it also reveals the irresistible foibles & philosophy of a talented & unusual mind. Funny, philosophical & surprisingly moving, this is the story of how a rootless American finds home in the most unexpected places & how Pasquale & his compatriots put life into perspective in the strangest way.