What Parks offers, again and again, is ‘detailed cultural observation’, as well as ‘witty yet eagle-eyed’ observation of ‘what makes Italians so Italian’. Parks non-fiction books do what books should do: reading Parks’ non-fiction is a deeply rewarding experience; as opposed to idling away your hours, mere diversion, the kind of engagement offered by mindlessly scrolling through video clips or comic-book dross; however, now, here, in the novel form, Parks sets out to show us, once more, how Italy really works. Why?
For those of us unreasonably fascinated by Italy, this is all well and good: graft Parks’ ‘detailed cultural observation’ and ‘witty yet eagle-eyed’ observation of ‘what makes Italians so Italian’ onto the novel form: what could go wrong? Well, it could be a tedious slog: grating one thing onto another in art is a tricky business: more often than not, the grafting doesn’t take. It all withers.
But what is Parks, over and above ‘the best interpreter of Italian ways in Italy’? Which he has proven again and again in his many great non-fiction books based on his own experiences of living in Italy. Is he also a great novelist? And is ‘Italian Life’ a great novel?
If this is just another one of those stories of ‘power and corruption, influence and exclusion, and the workings of a society where your connections are everything’; well then, what’s the point? Novels have to be novel, and not just for the reader who has read nothing.
It is said, in the reviews, that this novel is “written with flair and insight”: is this enough to make a novel work? To make it great? Parks has written a number of bestselling books about his “beloved and paradoxical adopted country”: so why use the novel form to do what Parks has already done again and again with such skill, sophistication and flair?
As well as having writing a series of best-selling non-fiction books about Italy, Parks is also the author of a number of novels, many of which achieved a great deal of acclaim, even being short-listed for the Booker Prize. He’s been living in Italy most of his life, and in that time, he’s banged out 18 novels before this one:
“Tongues of Flame’ (1985), ‘Loving Roger’ (1986), ‘Home Thoughts’ (1987), ‘Family Planning (1989), ‘Cara Massimina’ (1990), ‘Goodness’ (1991), ‘Shear’ (1993), ‘Mimi’s Ghost’ (1995), ‘Europa’ (1997) – shortlisted for the Booker Prize – ‘Destiny’ (1999), ‘Judge Savage’ (2003), ‘Rapids’ (2005), ‘Cleaver’ (2006), ‘Dreams of Rivers and Seas’ (2008), ‘The Server’ (2012), ‘Painting Death’ (2014), ‘Thomas and Mary: A Love Story’ (2016), ‘In Extremis’ (2017),
As well as ‘Talking About It’, a collection of short stories, (2005). Then he followed up ‘Italian Life’ with his most recent: ‘Hotel Milano’ (2023).
So what does the author of twenty novels achieve in this, his nineteenth? Yes, it’s “gripping” and “entertaining”, just as the reviews state, which is what great novels should be; there are some brilliant moves in the novel, which stops being a novel and starts being a novel with a frequency that is quite staggering. Just as Parks has once again roped us into a fascinating disquisition on this or that aspect of Italian culture, society or literature, he pull us further in with another deft meander of the plot: it’s a delicate balancing act.
But this is more than a “well-worked behind-the-scenes account of how Italy actually happens”, which is what we get in Parks’ non-fiction. It’s not, as some reviewers state merely a ‘satisfyingly truthful, entertaining’ comedy; it is also a ‘provocative’ one: the reader is provoked: which is a good way of summing up what great novels should do: provoke the reader. The opposite of the soporific romantic bilge that pretends to be great literature. Some novels set out to placate us, lie to us, hypnotise us, render us foolish; Parks sets out to challenge us: is how we see the world the only way?
Yes, ‘Parks is more than just an effortless raconteur: he offers detailed cultural observation, witty yet eagle-eyed, of what makes Italians so Italian … Parks skilfully shows how the rules and the manoeuvrings within Italian university life mirrors those at work in Italian society…. When Parks takes his reader behind the scenes and into a murky world of favouritism and nepotism, back-scratching and back-stabbing, collusion and exclusion, his narrative cracks up a gear and becomes gripping’. Like the great novel ‘Stoner’ by John Williams, Parks novel gives us a shake.
So, if it is ‘satisfyingly truthful’, it is more ‘provocative’; great novels shouldn’t set out satisfy us, better appal the reader, anger her, frustrate her.
Yes, we get submerged in the complexities of Italian society, as well as the beauty of modern Italian literature; but it is Parks’ novel – the structure of the story – that effortlessly carries everything, us too. This is a compelling, and at times shocking read, if it is also a comedy, in the classical Shakespearean sense; but it could well have been a ‘Stoner’ style tragedy: the reader has still been put through the wringer.
A Useful Fiction 