What I Read: One Italian Summer

I picked this book up in Target in Lake St. Louis while I was staying at my parents. It was one of two books I purchased that day after saying for weeks (years?) that I want to be reading more. What brought on the actual purchasing of books was realizing that I don't have a good/patient system of reserving books at the Library and keeping a consistent rotation. That, and I still like to touch the books I read in high school that were life changing to me. 

This book is not one of those life changing ones, at least for me. I picked up because it was coming recommended by a wide range of people (and the cover is adorable). I kept reading it because it was different than what I would usually reach for. 

One way that is strays from my preferred reading (besides being a novel) is how overly descriptive it is. I don't necessarily like spending time on the details, especially when they're made to feel romantic just for existing. I appreciate the descriptions of food. But almost everything else started feeling repetitive for me by chapter 2. However, I wonder if it will influence how I perceive the beauty of my own life, and I want to be stretching my own reading and writing muscles. At times, this  felt like the kind of stretch at the back of your knees when you're trying to touch your toes. 

This book also deals a lot with grief, which is something I haven't experienced so acutely. The grief is not moved through or resolved, but merely experienced over and over again. Almost like a bite of meat you have to keep chewing. From what I've read about grief, this is how it goes. It's not progressed through and completed. It comes in different ways at different times. Another stretch for me to sit with is this character processing her grief in, what felt to me, non-sensical ways. But I suppose that the point of grief isn't to make sense. In fact, it's usually regarding something that makes no sense at all.