A Year In Tuscany by Annie Ayre

Fans of English soap-operas should enjoy this dramady (drama-comedy) novel set in Italy's beautiful Tuscany region.  Rich, poor, criminals, priest... all the usual suspects for soaps are present.

The story is set in 1987 when Italy was dealing with kidnappings and homegrown terrorists.  The protagonists in this multi-strand tale deal with all sorts of odd happenings, with love stories at the center of most of it.  The author keeps all events, not matter how serious, light, with superficial emotions attached to them.

Very English tongue-in-cheek humor dots the story throughout.  One rich family in possession of a large estate acts as a hub around which all the other characters and events circle out.

We get to know the thinking of lots of locals and ex-patriots through the drama, gossip, and farcical situations.  The ending brings all the people and story threads together with a semblance of a happy-ending.

This is a beach read, or something to enjoy when relaxing poolside, preferably with a view of Tuscany, and a cool drink in hand.

From the book's description:

A comic novel set in the scenic Tuscan hills.

When the Duke of Grambörg announces over breakfast that he will sell the old family villa in the Tuscan hills to move to New York, his family is in uproar.

Where on earth will his beautiful daughters, the contessas Claudia and Hanna, live – now they no longer have the family seat?

And that, as it turns out, is just the beginning of the escapades that ensue after the old Danish duca makes his life-changing decision.

Will local poor boy-turned rich man, Osvaldo Cipollina, find a way to buy the villa?

Hopelessly in love with Hanna, will he ever manage to persuade her to see past his humble beginnings, not to mention his dubiously acquired wealth, and return his feelings?

Will the haughty Claudia ever be reconciled with her aristocratic husband: Lord Eastcliffe?

With a cast of characters as rich as a medieval tapestry, there is just no knowing what will happen next in this finely tuned comic novel.

From Lo Strapazzato – “The Scrambled One” – who is a little too fond of arson, to the international diamond smuggler with a taste for fine wines, to the mysterious American cousin of Osvaldo’s who arrives wearing a veil – everyone in this corner of Italy, it seems, has a secret.

That’s not to mention a sultry belle from the American deep south, an Australian crooner, and, at the heart of it all, the perfect sunshine of the Tuscan countryside.

A Year In Tuscany is a delightful story that will appeal to lovers of the English comic novel.

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com:

The 45th Nail by Michael Lahey and Ian Lahey

This original noir novel draws the reader in with a light, humorous first-person narration, by Bob, an American in Italy looking for a long lost relative.  A stay in Rome, followed by a road-trip around Italy with an Etruscan fanatic for tour guide makes up much of the action in the book. 

But like the dark comedy film "Shallow Grave", the progression under the skin of the protagonist is the biggest journey in the story.  We start with a flawed protagonist, Bob, someone we know is deceitful, unloving and mercenary, and through his unusual events and encounters in the story, his flawed character develops to a higher level of awfulness. 

The first hint that he is truly twisted down below is when he drops a joke about rape.  His lack of moral compass becomes more and more apparent as the story progresses, so that his actions at the end come as not much of a surprise.

This is a book for people who do not need to like the protagonist of the stories they read.  It is a well-written book, full of original touches, and much Italian lore, landscape and language.  WWII is the backdrop of the story, and it comes more to the fore as the story progresses.

For those who believe a person can inherit character weaknesses via DNA, this story will hold especial interest, as the similarities between Bob's flaws and the flaws of his long lost relative emerge in the course of the story. 

That was when I thought not of "Shallow Grave" but of Robert Duvall and John Savage as relatives in the 1987 noir drama "Hotel Colonial", in which a brother discovers how evil his elder brother is, and then finds that he too is capable of great violence when he judges it necessary.

The 45th Nail is a fascinating book for a discerning reader, but probably not to everyone's taste. 

From the book's description:

A Christmas card from Italy arrived on Robert Svenson’s desk. There was no return address, but when Bob opened the card, it was signed by his uncle, James Savorski. Nice, except for the fact that Uncle Jim was declared MIA back in ’44. Forty years later he’s sending solid gold Etruscan amulets for Christmas presents? Bob resolved to travel to Italy to see if he could find his long lost uncle.

How does one find a dead man in Italy without knowing the language or having an address? All Bob knew was that losing his luggage and his money the first night in Rome didn’t help. Then he found himself picking his way through a minefield of old scars and memories of war.
Along the way he journeys through Italy’s art and its incredible archaeological treasures, its history and people. A tale of war and mines and other things buried underground and even deeper—in the hearts of those who lived those years.

Here is the book's trailer:

 

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com:

Please visit the book's official website.  This is the author's Facebook page.

Chickens Eat Pasta, Escape to Umbria by Clare Pedrick

This memoirs describes an English woman's emigration to Umbria, Italy, in the 1980s.  She purchases a ruin there, has it restored, becomes an active member of a small village, builds an ex-pat career in journalism, and falls in love with and marries an Italian.  Intelligently, the author spoke Italian before emigrating, and she had a career that could move with her, with some effort:  journalism.

The book is very well-written, which is not surprising, since the author is a professional writer.  I thought the playing around with the timeline unnecessary, though, which was likely done to create some suspense in the account.  But when the book's description, and the author's biography tells the ending of the true story, the suspense is really non-existent no matter how the story is told.

Her choice, that started as an adventure, quickly gets bogged down in the realities of life in impractical Italy, especially Italy in the '80s.  It doesn't help that her ruin is in rural, poor, and I'm sorry to say, backward, isolated Umbria.  Some of the lives she describes are painful to read about, because of the archaic nature of the values, economics and roles of women.

There was one sour note in the book for me, too, when the crassness of professional journalists came through.  The author states happily that she found financially lucrative the Achille Lauro hijacking, since the American Mr. Klinghoffer was murdered by the hijackers making the American press eager to buy her stories about the hijackers.

The author does explain why there are so many abandoned rural properties in Italy:

Most Italians these days want something modern and clean...and they think these old places are a sign of poverty.

And she shares what everyone who attempts to live in Italy for any length of time discovers:

How complicated life was in this country, where there seemed to be rules at every turn just waiting to trip you up.  No wonder it was so important to have friends in the right places.

Actually, the book is about many of those friends of the author.  We learn that they smoothed her path in Italy quite a bit in the beginning.  We also learn much about their characters, dramas, and private lives.

That leads to the main thing I missed in the book, a Preface that might have explained that names had been changed to respect the privacy of the many people in the book, whose private moments are repeated for the entire world as entertainment.

I've since learned that the name of the village was changed, so I'm hoping the names of people were changed too, because the thought of that not being the case makes me cringe with discomfort for those described.

It does seem odd, however, that the author bothered to change the name of the village when on the ad pages for her vacation apartments that she rents out in her Umbrian villa she mentions this book about the villa's purchase.

Also missing is a mention of the years covered in the book, which by my estimate are roughly the 1980s.  I lived in Italy during the same period, and spent some of that time in Umbria, so I know that what the author describes is very accurate.  Her memoirs act as a time-capsule of that era.

The last thing I missed was an explanation of how, after thirty plus years, the author could honestly include so many minute details in her memoirs, such as dining menus and people's outfits and their precise words from conversations.  Perhaps she kept a journal?  Perhaps it was fictionalized?  I don't know, because we're never told how the book came to exist, and to exist in such implausible detail.

I don't wish this review to come over as negative, because the book was well-written, and it describes an era in Italy and Umbria that has most likely come to an end.  The Internet age, and an invasion of Italy by retirees, ex-pats and tourists has quite likely brought and end to the isolation described in rural Italy. 

The book immerses the reader in the era and the story, peppering it with local characters and vignettes about their lives.  The account of her mixed culture relationship with a Neapolitan is also very realistic, and would be an excellent warning to those women who dream of running off to Italy to marry an Italian.

Relationships are difficult enough without throwing into the mix all the little misunderstandings that come about from cultural differences, and all the major roadblocks that come from interventions by families and friends who think they know best.  It takes wisdom, patience and understanding on top of a strong love, to make those relationships work.   

  

From the book's description:

Not just another romance, but a story of escapism, coincidences, friendship, luck and most of all... love.

Chickens Eat Pasta is the tale of how a young Englishwoman starts a new life after watching a video showing a chicken eating spaghetti in a mediaeval hill village in central Italy.

“Here I was, 26 years old, alone and numb with boredom at the prospect of a future which until recently had seemed to be just what I wanted.”

Unlike some recent bestsellers, this is not simply an account of a foreigner’s move to Italy, but a love story written from the unusual perspective of both within and outside of the story. As events unfold, the strong storyline carries with it a rich portrayal of Italian life from the inside, with a supporting cast of memorable characters.

Along the way, the book explores and captures the warmth and colour of Italy, as well as some of the cultural differences – between England and Italy, but also between regional Italian lifestyles and behaviour.

It is a story with a happy ending. The author and her husband are still married, with three children, who love the old house on the hill (now much restored) almost as much as she does.

Chickens Eat Pasta is Clare’s autobiography, and ultimately a love story – with the house itself and with the man that Clare met there and went on to marry. If you yearn for a happy ending, you won’t be disappointed. It’s a story that proves anything is possible if you only try.

Here's a direct link to the book at Amazon.com:

The Confessions of Frances Godwin by Robert Hellenga

Frances Godwin, a fictional character, narrates her confessions, written late in life, part memoir, part mea culpa.  She spends sections of her life in Italy's Florence, Rome, and Verona, and these times have a great impact on her psyche.  Francis spends much of her life immersed in the Latin and Italian languages.  These are the reasons I requested a review copy of this book.

The book is divided into four parts.  The first part explains how her "Confessions" come to exist.  The second part relates how she acquired a husband and child.  The fourth part describes her life with her husband and daughter.  The last part brings us up to date with the last part of her life.

The narrative style of the book is first person, ruminative, almost stream-of-consciousness.  The narration is rich with detail about the place and time described.  Rome, 1963 comes to life, for example.  People feel real, but they are all described through the lens of Frances Godwin. 

The text is peppered with Latin and Italian words, two languages Francis speaks well.  She is a Latin teacher, and she learned Italian in school and from traveling in Italy.  When Francis uses Latin or Italian words and phrases, she always provides a translation.

I thought Italian would be less traumatic than English.  But keeling in the deep shadows of the confessional I started to speak in Latin.  "pater, pecavi..."

"Piano, piano," the priest said.  Slow down.  "Did Father Adrian send you to test my Latin?"

"Non," I said.

"Start over," he said.  "This time in Italian."

Francis provides not just her history, but inadvertently through herself and her family and others in the book, she provides a sort of social history of American Catholics during the years, too. 

Francis Godwin is a parochial woman, but Francis's mother is deeply conservative.  Francis's parents come from farm stock, from Poland.  We get the feeling that their Catholic faith is perhaps the only thing keeping these people on a moral track in life.

The book is rich with a love of Latin, and literature, and the arts and Italy.  The character is knowledgeable about Ancient Roman history and loves to mention that, too.  This book would make a nice gift for classicists and fans of Ancient Rome. 

There is a real sense of the academic life in the book, since Francis and her husband were professors.

If you're part of a small liberal arts college, you don't need religion.  You don't need a church.  The college will provide all the tings the people used to expect from a church:  a sense of community, an active interest in the large questions about the meaning and purpose of human life, and even a memorial service when you die.

We get hints of surprises to come, along the way, then the book takes a different turn after the halfway point.  I found Francis not always convincing as a real person.  Perhaps because she is so different from me.  And she has a love of detail but a lack of character depth, which she acknowledges late in the book.

I imagine some readers will connect with the long life lived and loved and celebrated in the details in Confessions, especially women of a certain age who have loved one man for a long time, and who have struggled with hopeless children. 

This is a sad book, at least in my opinion.  I did not find it particularly funny, despite what the publisher's blurb says.  The rambling, first-person narration lost its charm for me at a certain point, and the abundance of un-necessary detail became distracting.

Religion is a key element in the book.  The protagonist veers away from her religion, and then is drawn back to it by her own conscience that was well developed by her devout mother and a religious education.  In her confessions, Francis Godwin deals with life and death, and guilt and remorse.  She ruminates on love, and on the meaning of life.

Here is reading by the author of a previous books of his, which sounds in a very similar style to The Confessions of Francis Godwin, especially in the ruminative details.

From the book's description, which, as usual, gives a bit too much away, in my opinion:

An unforgettable and refreshingly witty narrator struggles to validate her life in this new novel from the bestselling author of The Sixteen Pleasures.

The Confessions of Frances Godwin is the fictional memoir of a retired high school Latin teacher looking back on a life of trying to do her best amidst transgressions—starting with her affair with Paul, whom she later marries.  Now that Paul is dead and she’s retired, Frances Godwin thinks her story is over—but of course the rest of her life is full of surprises, including the truly shocking turn of events that occurs when she takes matters into her own hands after her daughter Stella’s husband grows increasingly abusive.  And though she is not a particularly pious person, in the aftermath of her actions, God begins speaking to her.  Theirs is a deliciously antagonistic relationship that will compel both believers and nonbelievers alike.

From a small town in the Midwest to the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, The Confessions of Frances Godwin touches on the great questions of human existence:  Is there something “out there” that takes an interest in us?  Or is the universe ultimately indifferent?

The Confessions of Frances Godwin is published by Bloomsbury Publishing, and in the United States by Bloomsbury USA.

Direct link to the book and author's page at B-UK

Direct link to the book and author's page at B-USA

Here are direct links to the book at Amazon.com

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

Bringing It All Back Home by Nicola Lagioia

Bringing It All Back Home (the name of a famous album by Bob Dylan) is a translation from the original Italian of the award-winning novel Riportando tutto a casa.  It is a coming-of-age story that ends in an "abyss of regret and sleepless nights" from which the narrator has yet to escape, in the words of the narrator himself.

The changes that took place in Italy during the 1980s are portrayed through the adult intellect of a man looking back critically and sardonically at his and his country's Regan-era boom years.  The narrator comes to recognize the huge socio-economic and moral divide that exists between his generation and his parents' generation, and the marked moral lapses they both share. 

It was ...1986, the year of AIDS and of runaway success for entrepreneurs, of the compact disc, the video recorder, children who hated their parents, and automated garages that rose up into the sky.

1980s pop-culture, much of it American, is mentioned in the book, including Dirty Dancing

The narrator is from Bari, Apulia, in southern Italy, and he is the first generation of young people in Italy to experience freedoms such as divorce, easy financial credit, secular education, and trashy commercial TV.

Being the '80s, and being about teenagers, three in particular, there are lots of pop-culture references and song lyrics to set the scenes, and to pad out the minimal plot.  The young adults' relationships with their parents are the main points of the book, along with the relationships of the young people with each other, and with the world at large. 

The author gifts the narrator with a sharp eye on the adults around him:

My father was descended from generations of people who had nothing to their names, who worked other people's lands, cleaned other people's toilets, fought in wars where you could never tell who had won what.

The book features three young men from the generation born with one foot in the near-past, and the other foot set firmly in the Information-Age.  This gives them a perspective that people born in the '80s and '90s do not have. 

The narrator goes back to discover his past, like Marty in Back to the Future, but without all the fun

Many children of the '60s and 70s have a unique self-awareness, and an awareness of the miraculous changes that society has been subjected to since the advent of near-universal access to reliable birth-control, and to a shrinking of the planet due to instant-communication and near-universal access to a means for instant-publishing/broadcasting of personal views.

The way the world works and doesn't work all across the globe is no longer a mystery.  So when the narrator's father speeds along in the car, passing police cars and ambulances, and running red lights, the child can recognize the errors of Italy, of which is father is oblivious, or willfully oblivious.

Television news channels brought the same news to people all around the globe in the '80s, making us all less insular, including Italians, but also spurring more fear of others and catastrophe

Despite the growing wealth in Italy in the '80s, the narrator's father, due to his upbringing in poverty, felt as if he'd "made it onto the ship, and yet he still felt like an illegal immigrant".  I suspect a better translation for the last word in the previous sentence would have been "stowaway". 

Poor, rural women, who "lived in a kind of hovel and saw universal suffrage as just another aspect of the submission they needed to show their husbands" are remnants of pre-industrial civilization, living and working alongside "the tamed nightmare of civilization".

The young people in the book are coddled only-children who are caught up in their families' ambitions and familial shame.  The children are damaged, unable to deal with their parents, who are themselves damaged by their ill-preparation for the new-society.  For the parents, neglect follows wealth, as wealth opens new doors to enjoyment.  For the children, the neglect combined with wealth opens dangerous doors to vice.

 

 

Teenaged gore-fests become gorier in living-color in the 1980s

The narrator shows in the minute, memoirs-like narrative, dense with detail, that education and easy credit were the keys to the economic growth, luxuries the reward of economic growth, isolation the risk of wealth, and moral bankruptcy the most certain outcome of the '80s in Italy.

The book traverses most of the 1980s:

The Eurythmics were back on the charts.  Dirty Dancing was at the box office.  The Iron curtain was still standing.  Margaret Thatcher had been re-elected for a third term.  There we were, back in 1987.

The way President Regan is mentioned in the book one would think he had been President of the World, his influence on the Cold War affecting everyone, especially Europeans

Another aspect of 1980s Italy takes center stage in the second half of the book:  the heroin epidemic, the "whale of our generation" that swallowed them up.  Presumably, the cheap heroin from war-torn Afghanistan was the impetus for legions of middle-class Italian children to head to drug dens. 

The author explains the reason they indulged in the cheap drugs to be the appeal of drugged up sex, broad based rebellion, boredom, and to escape societal and parental pressures.  I'm always dubious when people give "reasons" for drug and alcohol abuse.  Each case is unique, but social pressure and a desire to switch off the brain to escape personal responsibilities are most often behind it, at least before physical addiction takes over.

"Portrait of Roberto Benigni and Massimo Troisi Smiling", I noticed lots of "missing" Italian pop-culture in the novel, oddly, although some television shows were mentioned

We move to the near present, too, to see why our narrator went on his journey into his past, and how this book came to be.  When wanting to reconnect with people in his past:

The first move was to turn to the one great, perfectly visible and certified revolution in the recent history of the human race [the Google search-engine].

The author gives his narrator some insights into the present as well as the past.  He finds people's excessive self-exposure on social network sites as a "strategy of concealment--attempts at diversion".  He even admits that his search to flesh out his own history, this book, is pointless: 

...the material reconstruction of an old story is always insufficient, arrogant, incomplete.  And it's nothing.

The seeds of the Internet were planted in the decades before the '80s, like this supercomputer at Los Alamos, and the Internet allows the narrator to retrace his past

The author is clearly well-read and well-studied, and he possesses a literary fluency, dotted with rich, associative, poetic passages.  There are times when the verbosity tends to excess and showiness, and there are times when the line between art and vulgarity is crossed.  The translation is excellent, as is the editing.  Often the chapters left a nasty taste in my mouth, as if the author's and the narrator's cynicism was contagious.  The details of the novel suggest it is partially autobiographical.

I would imagine the appeal of the book would be mainly to people who lived through the times depicted, who might want a nostalgic look back through eyes that have become as wise as their own, or wiser.  All the major historical and social events are mentioned, and '80s fashion is described throughout.

As a non-Italian, but one who lived in Italy during this period, the appeal is more of curiosity and as a means of seeing Italy through the eyes of an extremely expressive local, which is why I requested a review-copy.  If you are a non-Italian, the appeal might be to see your 1980s from a different angle, from the perspective that comes from life in Bari, Apulia.

You get the feeling the narrator would like to blast his past away much like Dirty Harry in the 1983 Sudden Impact

From the book's description:

Giuseppe has red hair, pimples, and an inexhaustible reserve of money in his wallet. Vincenzo is good looking and serious, like any respectable adversary. The third friend is the one telling the story: with caustic precision, this restless narrator records dizzying teenage discoveries, the lazy inertia of the high school years, and the plunge into adulthood.

The city is Bari in southern Italy, the time, the 1980s. The era of ideologies has been killed off—the streets are full of optimism; commercial television channels are recalibrating people’s desires and aspirations; “something akin to a storm front of madness” is running through Italy’s economy. The times are moving fast, and the glow of so much burned money lingers on. And under those ashes lies still more money, smoldering with the desire to be passed from hand to hand.

And yet, as the three boys tackle life’s challenges, it becomes clear that things are not so simple. Despite their families’ evermore luxurious homes, despite the success of their fathers (a businessman obsessed with social climbing, a famous lawyer, and a talented ex-mechanic who has borrowed money from the wrong people), despite their mothers— or stepmothers—who wear out designer heels walking from one shop window to the next, the radar behind these adolescents’ eyes detects unexpected vibrations.

Nicola Lagioia has written a mature, angry coming-of-age novel. The writing is taut, perceptive, and precise, reaching sparkling heights in a story of friendship, betrayal, and generational conflict, which ultimately takes us to the beginnings of our own time in history, and to the eternal adolescence of a country that is growing old without ever having grown up.

Here's a view of the 1980s from newscasters at the end of 1989, also with prescient views of the decades to come:

Bringing It All Back Home is published by Open Road Media.

Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media. Open Road has published ebooks from legendary authors including William Styron, Pat Conroy, Jack Higgins, and Virginia Hamilton, and has launched new e-stars like Mary Glickman.

Direct link to author's page at ORM

Here is a direct link the Bringing It All Back Home at Amazon.com in paperback and e-book editions:

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

Pepe & Poppy,Tarantella vs Zorba by Joe Novella

Pepe & Poppy is a romantic-comedy-coming-of-age story set in Melbourne, Australia, within the city's large Italian immigrant community.  Actually, Pepe and his brother Charlie, the first-person conversational narrator of the story, are hyphenated Italians, the first generation born in Australia.  Poppy, however, is from Melbourne's large Greek immigrant community, a first generation child, too.

Pepe and Poppy meet and fall in love.  Today, that would be less of an event.  However, in the early 1980s, where the book is set, this is akin to a tragedy for the two lovers' families.  Pepe's family's biggest worries are:

• Are they Catholic?
• Can she make pasta, pizza, lasagna?
• Can she prepare Italian coffee?
• What language and culture will the children learn?
• Would she be able to understand us?

 

 

Genovese Coffee and Vespa, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

The author has his narrator not only tell the story, but explain to the reader the "realities" of being a Italian-Australian.  Here is his introduction to his family:

...let me let you in on a very important fact and that is Italians think themselves the best lovers, fighters and most cultured people on the face of the earth.  But what really makes them Italian is their love of family, closely followed by the home, the garden, their passion for celebrations and their desire to outdo all of their relatives.  My family was typical of Italian families in Australia in the eighties.

Desserts at Brunetti's, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

As the story progresses, the narrator lets us into what he learned from the events he relates in the book, about how similar Italian and Greek-Australians can be:

Italians and Greeks have uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents as far as the eye can see.  Back then family also meant paisanni -- anyone who grew up in the same town as your parents -- and those who baptized your kids, sponsored your confirmation and generally anyone who'd helped the family prosper.

The narrator tells us that his father came to Australia from Calabria, Italy, when he was a twelve-year-old boy, and build up his fortunes until he lived a comfortable life with his family.  A large part of that life was attending celebrations feted with homemade wine and food:  weddings, engagements, baptisms, first communions.

Gelato Van in St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia

The family speaks a Calabrese dialect, mixed with Australian English, just as Poppy's family speaks Greek mixed with Australian English.  Phrases in the languages are often written out in Pepe & Poppy, always with a translation, but not italicized. 

Let me just add a comment about Australian English for any non-Australian readers, and about the tone of this novel:  it can be a bit vulgar and crude, but it is rich with humor and a zest for life.  Some Aussie words might be unfamiliar, such as relos for relations, and bog-catcher for underpants, and chooks for chickens, but all the words are understandable in context.  There is also the frequent use of the word wog, a racially derogatory term that in Australia has been appropriated by those against whom it was used, to refer to themselves as a group.

Caffe Latte from Caffe Cartile in Melbourne's Block Arcade, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Pepe & Poppy is rich with humor, especially concerning the eccentricities of the families.  There are plenty of off-hand observations about Italians, like these:

...there's nothing scarier than silent Italians; it's unnatural.

Italians love emotional people.  If you're reserved you either have something to hide or you're just plain stupid.

The cultural references from the early eighties are fun, too; lots of nostalgia.  Pepe & Poppy has a cinematic structure, making it easy to imagine the book as a film.  It would make a colorful, goofy, romantic, nostalgic film.

Exterior of Luna Park Entrance Illuminated at Twilight, St. Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

In the end, Pepe & Poppy is a funny story about a cultural melting-pot.  In the background of the story is the suggestion that today's Australia is home to better-acculturated hyphenated Greeks and Italians, and that the Australian society is more appreciative of the best of Greek and Italian culture.

Here is the narrator commenting on the mixing of his family and his brother's fiancé's family, and why it works:

When an Italian marries a Greek, you get the union of two lots of people who believe themselves to be the creators of modern civilization...

Pepe & Poppy is well-written, well-constructed, well-edited, and very entertaining.  It transports you to another world, immerses you in it, and leaves you feeling better for it, in the end.  You can feel lots of love behind the words.  It is a love-story for Pepe and Poppy, but it is a coming-of-age story for Pepe's brother, Charlie.

From the book's description:

Pepe and Poppy is 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' meets 'The Wedding Singer'.  A heartwarming story of love and acceptance.  A true celebration of cultural diversity.  If you loved the 80's, if you come from a multicultural family, if you love to laugh, then this is the book for you.

It's 1983 in the multicultural city of Melbourne and the worlds of Italy and Greece are about to collide.  Giuseppe Allevoni, from good Italian stock, and Kaliopi Papadopoulos, a good Greek girl, fall in love and set in motion a culture clash that, while at times comical, threatens to tear the young lovers apart.

Set against the backdrop 80's fashion in a world of discos, home-grown tomatoes and pissing-angel fountains, Pepe & Poppy is a charming and heartwarming story about love and acceptance and the universal similarities between us all.

Never been to Melbourne, Australia?  Here is a one-minute-thirty-second video postcard of the city, the setting for the book:

The Pepe & Poppy e-book can be downloaded from Smashwords, a major on-line retailer of e-books, offering each book in various e-book formats, for instant download, with no extra fees for non-U.S. customers.

Direct link to Pepe & Poppy page at Smashwords

Pepe & Poppy is also available via Amazon.com in Kindle e-book and paperback editions.  Here are direct links to both:

Visit the author's website and Facebook page.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.