A Small Place in Italy

infobox Book |
name = A Small Place in Italy
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author = Eric Newby
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country = United Kingdom
language = English
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genre = Travel memoir, Autobiographical novel
publisher = HarperCollins
pub_date = 1994
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media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 214 pp (first edition, hardback)
isbn = ISBN 0002158663 (first edition, hardback)
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"A Small Place in Italy" is a travel memoir and autobiographical novel written by Eric Newby, author of "The Last Grain Race" and "Slowly Down the Ganges". In 1967, Eric Newby and his wife Wanda acquire an old run-down farmhouse in Italy, I Castagni (The Chestnuts), in the foothills of the Apuan Alps on the borders of Liguria and northern Tuscany. The book is a personal memoir of the couples experiences in renovating the house, which had a tileless roof, a long-abandoned septic tank and a wealth of indigenous flora and fauna, as well as a vivid description of their neighbours and the lifestyle of country people in Italy at that time.

Plot summary

The Newbys want to purchase a house in Italy before house prices start rising and, through the help of contacts, finally purchase "I Castagni" for two and a half million lire (£1,500) after a long and laborious sales process with the owner, a Signor Botti. Once they move in, they have to completely renovate everything, and our beset with various problems such as mice, a plague of cockroaches and an intractable neighbour who insists on using what he sees as a right of passage for agricultural machinery that passes right outside the house - he even moves their outside dining table when he finds it blocking his path. The Newby initiate a law suit against him which goes on for years owing to the dilapidated Italian legal system, but which they finally manage to win owing to the man lying before the judge.

The strength of the book is in its descriptions of some of the neighbouring families and the individual family members. Their closest neighbour is a sprightly Italian widow, Signora Angiolina, who helps them navigate their way through the intricacies of social life in their neighbourhood, as well as the Dada family who own several acres of vineyards and cook stupendous meals whenever the Newby's visit them at the Casa Dada. There is a very colourful description of the "vendemmia", the annual grape harvest, during which Eric is roped into lifting "bigonci", large barrel-shaped vessels full of crushed grapes, that nearly break his shoulder. Although the work is hard, there are "merenda", consisting of huge outside picnics at which copious quantities of food are eaten, last year's wine drunk and bawdy gossip exchanged between the "contadini". Another interesting description is when the Newbies join their neighbours in the annual "funghi" harvest in a very bountiful year, managing to gather ten full baskets between the four of them (less successful is a harvesting of wild asparagus when Eric forgets his bifocals and cannot see anything).

Unfortunately, the book as a whole proves to be rather a let down. The beginning is a re-run of Newby's time as an escaped prisoner in "Love and War in the Apennines", and it is also too disjointed, with several overlong descriptions of the Italian countryside that surrounds the farmhouse. There are some interesting character portrayals, such as Attilo, a strange but very endearing old man and the last "narratore" (storyteller) in those parts, who also lives in a part of the farmhouse, but the action is not as stimulating as in some of Newby's other travel books. This is perhaps due to the fact that they could never live there full-time as Newby was working as travel editor for "The Observer" at the time and could only visit I Castagni during his holidays. However, anyone who is an Italian-officianado should enjoy passages such as Newby's retracing his route along the "crinale", the main ridge of the Apennines, with two young "guardie" for company (a rather bleak and dismal journey as it turns out, even though they did it at the end of May).

References

*"A Small Place in Italy", Eric Newby, Picador, 1995
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