Pasquale's Nose: Idle Days in an Italian Town

Overview

Everywhere hailed for its quirkiness, its hilarity, its charm, Pasquales Nose tells the story of a New York City lawyer who runs away to a small Etruscan village with his wife and new baby, and discovers a community of true eccentricswarring bean growers, vanishing philosophers, a blind bootmaker, a porcupine hunteramong whom he feels unexpectedly at home. A book of odd delightsgreat reading for the armchair traveler. A tonic for readers who find Peter Mayles Provence and Frances Mayess Tuscany lacking in spice.

Editorial Reviews

First-time author Rips, formerly a successful trial lawyer, ran off to the Etruscan village of Sutri with his painter wife and new baby. In Sutri, the likably neurotic author spent day after day in the cafe, reflecting on the notion that he "was unable to produce or even reflect on anything that I or anyone else would consider useful." Seemingly in the throes of a pre-midlife crisis, Rips presents his quirks at face value, sans psychospeak, with hilarious, moving or unsettling effect. In a small, ancient town, one might expect to find citizens repressed by long-standing social mores, an assumption both confirmed and disproved by the many eccentrics: the man who lights his cigarettes with a magnifying glass; an illiterate postman who leaves the villagers to sort their own mail; a blind bootmaker who claims he can make a perfectly sized boot just by looking at a person's foot (he can't, but still keeps his customers); and Pasquale, a terrifying brute with a penchant for smelling feet. Rips warms to Sutri, finding it "an archaic society... that had... forged a collective identity and story and that had a mystical attachment to both." The kindhearted, brutal and idiosyncratic Sutrinis' nonsensical ideas about causality and the author's peculiar, often bleak worldview complement each other perfectly. In tiny, glittering vignettes, Rips paints an extraordinary picture of interwoven sublimity and absurdity. (May 21) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Michael Rips

Michael Rips is a 5th generation Nebraska native. He currently practices criminal litigation & lives at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. This is his first book. 010

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Additional Info

Imprint

Hachette Book Group USA

Filesize

889.64 KB

Number of Pages

224

eBook ISBN

9780316022255