I Am A Reader - "Falling Palace" by Dan Hofstadter

My son's paternal grandmother's family is from a small town in the center of the Italian boot, Baselice, in the Province of Benevento, in the Region of Compania. Emigrating from the closest port, Naples, to simplify things for their Americani friends, they would sometimes say they were "Napoletani"...from Naples. I have had the pleasure of visiting Italy a number of times, but only once did I pass through Naples. It was during a trip up the western coast of Italy, through Amalfi, then Sorrento, with a stop in Pompeii and a pass through Naples on the way to Rome.  My memories of it are brief...it was large, crowded, noisy, dirty...famous for its garbage strikes and for the popularity of dry spaghetti sold by spaghetti vendors from open air street spaghetti carts in the late 18th century.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I found myself quite captivated by the book, "Falling Palace"

written by Dan Hofstadter.

The book is non-fiction but reads like a novel.  It is a personal account of the author's numerous trips to Naples over a period of many years.  The subtitle of the book is, "A Romance of Naples" and as I turned the pages, I began to understand his infatuation with the city.  What I appreciated most was that his view of Naples was not through idealized rose-colored glasses.  He very authentically described the locale and the people in a believable way.  He introduces various friends he made while he stayed there, especially a young woman with whom he had a relationship.  He interweaves the history of the city with his personal descriptions. I was fascinated with his account of the underground honeycombing of tunnels and caves that exist beneath Naples, how they came to be there and how they are still used today.  During his stay he does all he can not to remain an outsider but to dive in and engage in life.  The characters are priceless..bigger than life.  There is Zio Ippolito, an eccentric banker who during his life went to work in his pajamas and was given a special office so he could continue to work, dressed as he chose.  There is Gigi Attrice, the stuttering, chain-smoking actor, who taught him the Neapolitan dialect and the meaning of the important hand gestures.  There is Benedetta, the young woman he grows to love who is superstitious and interprets dreams to discover winning lottery numbers.  In the end I came to embrace Naples myself...respecting all that she has been through, appreciating her seedy, decaying architecture, her falling palace, seeing her as Hofstadter describes her, "A beautiful and wounded city."

This book is my selection for the month of September in the "Italy in Books Reading Challenge" hosted by Book After Book blog.  To see what others are reading this month, go here.