Penelope Green

My first Penelope Green book and I enjoyed it so much that I'll be going out to find her other books, maybe I should have read then in sequence? I loved her first hand account of moving to, then settling down in Naples, the snippets of information and history she gives of the city, it's people and the Camorra made it a little easier to understand why Naples has such a reputation. In spite of it all, I still want to go!

I really struggled to get into this at first. I persevered because the ground covered reminded me of how much I enjoy a good travel book – anecdotes and conversations with a range of different people that capture the flavour of a city, and depict something of the life of the expat and the expat community. And yet the book just didn’t seem to capture my interest until almost the last third, and even then I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as Green’s earlier book describing her time in show more Rome ... show less

I really enjoyed reading about the author's experiences of being in Rome, not as a tourist, but trying to live alongside the Italians. Her descriptions of places I have visited brought back pleasant memories. I didn't always agree with her choices.

Oh my, how hungry I was whilst reading this novel. I am hankering to go back to Italy thanks to Penelope Green.