The Other Side of the Tiber: Reflections on Time in Italy
Beginning with her hitchhiking entrance to Rome, Wilde-Menozzi stitches together memories, impressions, and images to tell a very personal story of her time in Italy. She has an amazing eye for the nuances of daily culture and an ear to the subtleties of language. She takes the reader from Rome, with its close-knit neighborhoods and concern for the poor, to Parma, Puglia, and farther south. She introduces us to a people who are warm, generous, deeply religious, and passionately patriotic. She reveals the art of Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Bernini and how that art has influenced a nation. And she spends considerable time talking about the Slow Food movement, which insists on food in local restaurants and markets being grown locally. The food is fresher and cheaper, and it ensures a livelihood for the local farmers and vintners. In short, readable sections, her memories and impressions lead the reader on a journey to discover another side of one of the most mysterious and romantic countries in the world. --Elizabeth Dickie