Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Center, by Michelle Damiani
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Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Center, by Michelle Damiani
Best Ebook Online Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Center, by Michelle Damiani
With dreams of la dolce vita, Michelle Damiani, her husband, three children, and two cats abandoned their suburban routine for Spello, an Italian hill-town. Escaping a lifestyle of helicopter-parenting and obsessing over soccer schedules, Michelle hoped to find a slower-paced life, as constant as cobblestones. What she found was more than she bargained for. She discovered that the armor formed over years of a predictable existence hid a fear of falling short and making a fool of herself. She discovered that even with her training as a child psychologist she was ill-equipped to protect her children from the old-world disciplinary style at the local public school. She discovered that making mistakes provides opportunities for warm instruction and care. She discovered not only that connecting with people can transcend language, but also how to cleave into the heart of village life, through festivals, celebration, and discussing how to properly cook pig skin. During the hospitalization of a family member, she learned the advantages of community gossip chains, which made her aware of the isolation that was the hallmark of her American days. She discovered the deep joy that comes from spending afternoons leaning out of windows chatting with neighbors about town happenings as pasta sauce burbles on the stove and the afternoon light slants along the cobblestone streets. Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Center is a celebration of Umbrian life, a guide to the treasures of the region. More than just what to see, the book offers a lens through which to appreciate what has been termed, “the green heart of Italy.” Seduced by Umbrian wine and food, Michelle lovingly recounts stunning meals at Umbrian tables groaning under the weight of home-cured salami and tagliatelle with sausage, mushrooms, and cream sauce. For those wanting a taste of Umbria, Michelle includes recipes for local specialties (including step-by-step instructions for how to roll pasta like an Umbrian grandmother, and how to dress that pasta in swoon-worthy sauce). Through four seasons, she recounts the shifts in landscape from achingly green hills and azure skies to stone walls steeped in fog laced with Christmas lights and the heady scent of grilling meats to the emergence of poppies nodding their jewel-like heads at the foot of the mountains. But more than this, she provides a window into the people of Umbria—their deep-seated pride, warmth, humor, and welcome. In an entertaining style, Michelle provides historical background of the region and tells how Umbrians keep their culture alive today. With lyrical prose interspersed with professional-quality photographs, she paints a picture of Umbrian life that has been unchanged for generations. And weaves a spell not soon forgotten. The book, written in a daily style, is an intimate account of a family’s change over the course of a year. At turns laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreakingly tender, Michelle tells the story of her family’s transition from anxious outsiders to honorary townspeople, as they adapt to the gentle rhythms of Umbrian life. Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Center evokes the pleasures of small town Italy and opens the gate into a world where a good lunch will take one straight into dinner. "I was not prepared for Italy Luckily, Italy was waiting for me anyway." Amazon Bestseller in Italian Travel
Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Center, by Michelle Damiani - Amazon Sales Rank: #91752 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-06-30
- Released on: 2015-06-30
- Format: Kindle eBook
Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Center, by Michelle Damiani Review To fulfill a lifelong dream, Michelle Damiani moved her husband, three school-aged children, and two cats to Spello, Umbria in central Italy to live for a year.Although she found a community ready to embrace her family, Damiani also encountered several stumbling blocks, including language difficulties, bureaucracy, and differing educational philosophies.Written in a journal format that traces Damiani's journey nearly day by day, Il Bel Centro provides a rare glimpse into a transplanted family's sojourn in Italy.Damiani opens up and shows incredible vulnerability within these pages, and parents will especially appreciate her concerns and frustrations as a mother attempting to guide and nurture her children through this life-changing time. Her descriptions of the people, customs, and food of Umbria are particularly enticing.If you can't get yourself to Italy for an extended stay, Il Bel Centro is a worthy substitute. Highly recommended.--Michelle Fabio, Bleeding Espresso** A version of this review originally appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of Ambassador, the magazine of the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF)
About the Author Michelle Damiani is a freelance writer, clinical psychologist, and food lover currently living in Charlottesville, VA. Her heart, however, is in Spello, Italy, where she and her family spent a year growing accustomed to being fish out of water, grappling with the hardships of parenting on foreign soil, and ultimately cleaving into the soul of Italian village life. Before that year abroad, Michelle wrote short fiction--one of her stories was recently awarded first place in the Hook Short Fiction contest, juried by author John Grisham. While in Italy, she used the time that her children were in Italian public schools to write a blog about their experiences. The blog, Il Bel Centro, was awarded the bronze award for best Italian blog by Expatsblog. Once back in Charlottesville, she transformed the blog into a book, Il Bel Centro: a Year in the Beautiful Center, now available in print and e-book.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. An excellent journey - brava! By Atul Saran This is ultimately a book about self-discovery. In our all-too-hectic lives, it is easy to get caught up in dealing with the mundane and not realize what we're taking for granted. How are the systems around us - the people, the organizations, the food, the language - actually a part of our very fabric and what happens when all that changes. There's a lot in here about resilience, but it's really more about adaptability and willingness to open your mind to something new. We also have three kids and struggle to make sure they make it to their myriad set of activities - I can imagine the challenges of moving within the country, perhaps to get a new job or to be closer to family, but the idea of picking up school-age children and putting them in a situation with an unknown language and culture seems daunting. And yet, the Damianis did just that. You leave the book feeling that this family is indeed a part of your own and the nostalgia of a friend you haven't met in some time, and both the triumphs and despairs become a part of you.I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, so I have had some time to really reflect on it. I love the blog/diary approach and the author really has a way of painting the sights, the sounds and the smells with words. Most books that I like, I just plow through, but this one is more akin to a long walk in the woods with new surprises at every turn – you don’t want to rush through it too quickly or you’ll miss something, and the destination is less the point than the walk itself. It also has another interesting quality – knowing that it is about a year in Italy meant that as the days (in the book) progressed, I knew how close I was to the end. You always know you’re close to the end of a book, of course, but I felt like I wanted to continue savoring the stories and actually had a bit of a reluctance to see it come to a close.There are so many little vignettes that I feel like I will carry away with me. Don't want to give any spoilers, but there is a particularly poignant moment when the author has a sudden realization how it must feel to be a foreigner in the U.S. - to be completely loquacious in your mother tongue and yet to be constantly fumbling in another language, imposing barriers upon yourself and hesitating to take yet another risk. I also absolutely loved the discussions about the elderly and the special needs children in Spello and how they are integrated into the community. The Italian systems are far from perfect, but they clearly have figured out how to draw the inclusiveness circle more broadly than we have in the U.S.And then there is the food. I haven't mentioned it yet only because I wasn't sure if I would make it to any other topic once I got to the food. But the incredible imagery with which the culinary delights are brought to life are absolutely drool-worthy. I literally would get hungry while reading, and I love that there are so many actual recipes thrown in (haven't tried them yet, but can't wait to give it a shot!).An excellent journey showing incredible courage to take a step into a new world. Brava, indeed.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. A trip down memory lane... By AmyWebbAdamo A sweet "ride-along" through 4 seasons of life abroad, getting to know the local people, colors and customs of an Umbrian town. I've lived in Italy for 15 years now, and this took me back to my initial days of tripping through my phrase book, ordering the wrong foods, getting lost and being thrilled about it, etc.Makes for a great "get-away" read for Summer.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. A Year in Italy By Booklover Many of us dream of taking our children overseas to learn a new language and experience a new culture, but few people are able to actually pull it off. For the rest of us, we can live vicariously through Il Bel Centro.Michelle’s writing is so descriptive and heartfelt that you really feel like you are there with her and her family as they spend a year in Spello, Italy. Like the Damianis, I was initially uncertain, wondering how they would manage in a foreign country, and worried about their committing cultural faux pas. But just as Michelle accepted the Italian mantra “piano, piano,” and began to revel in the slower pace of life and sense of community she found in Spello, I too relaxed and began to sink into the book.By around October (the book chronicles Michelle’s family’s experience from July to July), I was just soaking up the Italian experience, enjoying each small moment, and appreciating the ways and wisdom of the Spellani. I joined Michelle in her newfound joy and comfort in not knowing what to do, much less how to do it well, being OK with that, and even relishing it.Rarely does one find a writer so open, who shares her struggles, doubts, and insecurities so completely. This is a deeply personal book, and we readers are lucky that Michelle is courageous enough to share so much with us. As she says in the book, it’s only by opening ourselves up and allowing others in that we can form the connections that make our lives more meaningful.In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I know Michelle in real life (she’s a college friend). The beauty of Il Bel Centro is that it will make you feel like you know her, too.
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