Close to home reading: "Leaving Azzurro Behind" by Paola Buonadonna

It is with some trepidation, and a sense of novelty, that I click on "new post" to discuss my latest read. It is close to home in several ways. 

First - and this is the trepidation bit - the author is a friend and a (former) colleague. She is also a prominent Facebook friend, which means she will definitely see this review. I considered not doing a review in this case, really out of some sort of quintessentially English embarrassment, but justifying this with the notion that I could not be expected to be impartial and objective in the case. But then it struck me that there is no particular expectation of impartiality or objectivity on this blog, and, besides, I promised myself that I would post on every book (well, proper book) I read. So I'm posting, that's that. Besides, I did at one point promise Paola that I would tell people about her book.

Second, lots of people who read this (yes, there are four or five who do, assuming they are not lying through their teeth when they "like" the related FB posts) also know Paola. So there is a kind of in-the-family feel about this.


Third, the whole Italian-British thing is not alien to me personally, of course. I bear a significant responsibility for inducing another smart young Italian woman to leave the Azzurro for grey northern climes. Though Paola unaccountably despises Brussels (she has clearly never read this), there are more than a few parallels between moving from Genoa to London and from Pescara to Brussels.

OK, enough pre-emptive, defensive preamble, what of the book? I had indeed already read sections of the book, as they had appeared in slightly sporadic instalments on Paola's excellent and witty blog. However, at some point, she evidently made some sort of policy decision and just published the whole thing on Amazon. It's a very reasonable download, which I would commend to my dear readers. 

Leaving Azzurro Behind is a memoir, an intercultural tale of a young Italian woman breaking free of what one might consider actually quite agreeable family and cultural bonds to move to the often incomprehensible pleasures of the UK, first Scotland, later London. In fact, it is a variant - a particularly sophisticated and well-described one - of a story I have often heard from young Italians: London as the land of freedom, liberation from cloying family intrusiveness, locus of professional opportunity, where merit (and a bit of sheer chutzpah) can trump the logic of who you know and whose favours you (or your parents) can call in. 

One delight of the book is the witty observation of British virtues, failings and foibles, seen with the eye of a highly perceptive Italian (whose command of idiomatic English is, by the way, absolutely extraordinary), set against both a clear-eyed and deeply affectionate view of her homeland. I love this kind of thing: witty, observational, insightful and funny. Again and again, from the perspective of someone not totally without experience in Anglo-Italian interculturalism, I found myself delightedly thinking: "she's nailed it!". If for no other reason, all this makes up a great reason to read this book.

Frankly, I would have expected no less of the author. Witty observation and insightful humour is what Paola does. Regular, and now much lamented, Monday evening dinners in a rather democratic Strasbourg restaurant chewing over the travails of EU-Brits in both London and Brussels were adequate illustration of that. However, there is another dimension to this book, and that lies in the personal story it contains. The ties of family (concrete, immediate and peremptorily demanding - yes, even intolerably invasive - in a way, regrettably perhaps, that British family ties rarely are), the real struggles of a foreigner trying to find her place in what occasionally seemed a too-foreign land, and the protracted search for a life companion. 

It's probably not too much of a spoiler to say it ultimately ends happily in a mild-mannered and intellectual kind of way, though the path thereto was rather more incident-strewn and laboured than I had somehow imagined. How such a clearly romance-worthy person could go so long unappreciated by British manhood is frankly a mystery, though at the same time one which nicely illustrates Paola's observations as to the deficiencies of the English male, certainly in his alcohol-free state, redeemed only by such rare exceptions as that which, like some classical, albeit duly modest, deus ex machina, intervenes in the epilogue to this story of an Italian girl abroad. 

Paola, if I may address you directly, given that you are pretty certain to be an early reader of this post, may I say two things. First, though I knew you to be smart, witty and a good writer, you still have the capacity to surprise. This book goes deeper than I thought. Thanks, and complimenti for that. Second, may I take this opportunity to invite you, and mild-mannered intellectual husband, to Brussels one of these days, for in one matter you are, sadly, grievously wrong, viz your irrational distaste for Quirksville, Belgium, otherwise known as Brussels. 

That said, should you take this offer up, it will probably rain steadily all weekend, we will encounter terrible service everywhere we go and, as-bloody-usual, you will be proved right. So be it, the challenge is on.

To everyone else, a recommendation. A better read for two quid you will not get.