Saints and Soccer Balls: My Seasons in Italy, (Paperback)

Italy is more than brushstrokes and marble. Look closely, past the bella figura, the beautiful image which is everything. From a distance, those villages perched high on the sylvan hills look charming, but many of them are dying: undertakers are busier than obstetricians these days. Or those cats lolling among the fallen columns of Largo Argentina which look postcard pretty; seen up close, some hobble on three legs, others are blind--just a few of the thousands of stray pets abandoned each August across the city of Rome. And Nona will tell of the good old days of her youth when young women flaunted babies instead of Prada handbags. The stereotypes--the pious Catholics, the famous Italian famiglia, the smooth Casanova-are fading faster than Berlusconi fans in this evocative land. Clare Fleishman dispels the usual suspects and uncovers the truth behind other pressing questions: Why are there no index cards in Rome? How do Italians live so long with all those bad habits? Join the author as she poignantly recalls lessons both serious and silly from her seasons in Italy.