My Home Sweet Rome Living and Loving in the Eternal City Sari Gilbert 9780957397743 Books
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It’s a nice place to visit but would you really want to live there? Sari Gilbert, who has lived for close to 40 years in what many have called the Eternal City, answers with a resounding “yes”– but it’s a “yes… but”. A native New Yorker who moved to Rome after finishing graduate school and then became a journalist, Gilbert's book “My Home Sweet Rome Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City” describes what life is really like in the Italian capital to sum it up, “fascinating, and delightful, but not at all easy”. Many foreigners have moved to Italy, but relatively few have decided to stay on for the rest of their lives, unless they are married and have put down family roots. Gilbert uses her own particular status – as an attractive and single woman, as a journalist for major U.S. and Italian news organs, and as an American – as a magnifying lens to examine the various aspects of Italian and Roman life. She gives us an unveiled view of the country’s politics, its stifling bureaucracy, its contradictory social customs, everyday concerns and gastronomical habits. Gilbert also takes us through the less pleasant phases of recent Italian history Mafia, terrorism, the assassination attempt on the life of the first (but not the last) non-Italian Pope, the meteoric rise of Silvio Berlusconi. In the process, we learn what it is like to work in Italy as both a foreign correspondent and a local reporter for Italian newspapers. Even more intriguing perhaps, Gilbert sheds light on what love affairs are really like with Italian men, be they average Giuseppes or high-placed movers and shakers.
My Home Sweet Rome Living and Loving in the Eternal City Sari Gilbert 9780957397743 Books
I am glad that I read this book because it helped me to understand a lot about Italian customs, a subject that interests me. Just about everyone in the Western world should already know about the absolute beauty of the country, but I would venture to say that few people understand the Italian psyche.We stayed for two weeks in Sari's apartment in Trastevere, so I truly enjoyed the descriptions of her apartment, the neighborhood, (the vu compra'), the bars and restaurants in the area, some of which we visited. If I had read this book before our trip (not that I would have ever been aware of it) I would have had a better understanding of the place itself, probably. However, reading it on returning home to the US, I found it like a souvenir -- a remembrance.
We found Sari to be a helpful and gracious host. We have rented scores of apartments in Europe and the US over the past decade or two, and often we never even meet the owner, let alone get a glimpse into his/her life. Usually the best that one can hope for is a loose leaf binder with info about nearby attractions and restaurants. (By the way, we liked her apartment very much. It was a very good location and had a great kitchen.)
We had no way of knowing who she is, of course, before meeting her. I might have been a bit more deferential had I understood her status as a journalist, and certainly we could have had a more interesting conversation with her.
One can expect that, since Sari has made her living as a writer, the text of the book is well written with proper grammar and complex sentences. I, like many reviewers, found her sexual exploits a bit more than I needed to know, but that is just personal preference. What I really enjoyed was the rest of the book.
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My Home Sweet Rome Living and Loving in the Eternal City Sari Gilbert 9780957397743 Books Reviews
The book has an intriguing premise...a young, single, liberated, American woman working in Italy as a journalist. Unfortunately it fails to live up to that premise due to the author's preoccupation with giving us the details of her sexual dalliances, not even marginally more interesting than the well-worn path of those by men, in fact somewhat surprisingly adolescent and at times even pathetic. It becomes interesting when she describes Italian culture, politics and the sociological changes the country went through during her time there. It would have been nice if had devoted more space to fleshing that out and less on tales of the flesh. Still, an interesting read overall.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book as it has set the stage for our upcoming trip to Rome. I now have some background in Italian history as well as practical information about living in Rome today, like Do not drive a car!!!! Not that we had planned to do that, but her description of five Roman drivers neck and neck at a stoplight vying for the two lanes available on the other side of the intersection got my attention. And the story about the Italian resistance to the seatbelt law, wearing white T shirts with a diagonal black stripe across the chest really tickled me.
I also enjoyed reading about her writing career, her relationships with men (kind of sad) and the Italian culture rich in art and incredible food. Can't wait to get there!
The strengths are the the richness of description, the humorous anecdotes, the author's evident fondness for her subject matter. The weakness is glaring, and at times ,add it hard to see the book through (tho' I did) an undisciplined repetitiveness, which makes the book easily a third over-long. (Good God, how many times should one have to read a description of the author's preferred physical 'type'?! And this is but one example of a tendency to redundancy across multiple topics, a strange flaw in a book from a seasoned journalist. This is a book that would have been vastly improved by an editor of sternest demeanor. A smaller but still-grating annoyance why does the author repeatedly refer to gay men as "male homosexuals", as if she were writing a 1950's psychoanalytic treatise? In a 21st century work, it is as archaic as "Negroes", and suggests a tin ear at best, or some ill-disguised scorn at worst. Check yourself, please, Ms. Gilbert.
I am a 62 year old American woman.I have been married to a native(Frosinone) Italian for the past 17 years.... this book was a total validation of what i felt but was at a loss for words to accurately describe...your journalistic insights, and talents have given me (at last) another human that gets it! It ain't been easy...and the thought of my grandchildren having to visit me in prison has been the motivation for me not actually killing him several times over. I have given up the illusion that we will ever see anything through agreeable eyes. That being said, we are moving to Italy come this summer...to live in the (now empty) family house...when we get there we are supposed to trade off some of his own land in Italy for the total ownership of the house. Hence, this is our nest egg. My gut feeling is that this may take at least 20-30 years to accomplish....but, back to the book....what a great resource this will continue to be for me! I at least understand portions of this country's history, and I have a better handle on why it can be so maddening to try to make sense of what's happening there now. What a wonderful memoir you have shared with the world! Best of luck with this book! I will surely pass this one on to my friends.
I am glad that I read this book because it helped me to understand a lot about Italian customs, a subject that interests me. Just about everyone in the Western world should already know about the absolute beauty of the country, but I would venture to say that few people understand the Italian psyche.
We stayed for two weeks in Sari's apartment in Trastevere, so I truly enjoyed the descriptions of her apartment, the neighborhood, (the vu compra'), the bars and restaurants in the area, some of which we visited. If I had read this book before our trip (not that I would have ever been aware of it) I would have had a better understanding of the place itself, probably. However, reading it on returning home to the US, I found it like a souvenir -- a remembrance.
We found Sari to be a helpful and gracious host. We have rented scores of apartments in Europe and the US over the past decade or two, and often we never even meet the owner, let alone get a glimpse into his/her life. Usually the best that one can hope for is a loose leaf binder with info about nearby attractions and restaurants. (By the way, we liked her apartment very much. It was a very good location and had a great kitchen.)
We had no way of knowing who she is, of course, before meeting her. I might have been a bit more deferential had I understood her status as a journalist, and certainly we could have had a more interesting conversation with her.
One can expect that, since Sari has made her living as a writer, the text of the book is well written with proper grammar and complex sentences. I, like many reviewers, found her sexual exploits a bit more than I needed to know, but that is just personal preference. What I really enjoyed was the rest of the book.
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