La Bella Lingua

February 2, 2009
In this charming love letter to the language and culture of Italy, journalist Hales recounts her inebriation with Italian's sounds and her lovesickness over its phrases. Enamored of this lovely and lovable language, Hales immerses herself in Italian culture on numerous trips to Italy in her attempt to “live Italian.” She comes to think of Italian as “a lovable rascal, a clever, twinkle-eyed scamp that you can't resist even when it plays you for a fool.” Hales regales us with the mysteries of the language, such as when a color becomes more than hue. She tells us that yellow, for example, refers to a mystery “because thrillers traditionally had yellow covers.” In her rapture over the language, she also swoons over Italian literature (from Dante to Manzoni), opera (Verdi and Puccini) and cinema (Marcello Mastroianni and Fellini) as she rehearses the many ways in which the language has seductively slipped into Western culture and consciousness.

April 1, 2009
An unabashed celebration of Italian language and culture.

Health writer Hales (Think Thin, Be Thin, 2004, etc.) covers a lot of ground with snapshots of the pinnacles in Italy's rich cultural history, including literature, opera, sculpture, film and cuisine. The author begins by asserting that she became"madly, gladly, giddily besotted with the world's most luscious language," and she makes the dubious assertion flouting Italian as the most emotionally evocative language that best embodies"civilization itself." Hales is at her best when she describes quirky Italian phrases or words and their possible etymologies. She introduces rare words like colombeggiare ("to kiss one another like doves"), as well as numerous Italian vulgarities like cafone ripugnante ("disgusting boor"). The autobiographical aspect of the book is nearly an afterthought. Moments of description and dialogue with real people seem randomly inserted into chapters, and Hales's personal reflections re-emerge at the end of each chapter with a revelation that is often unsurprising, clich and—to quote the author's description of Petrarch's more sentimental verses—"saccharine." The author provides the requisite chapter on Dante, the exalted glimpses of Michelangelo and da Vinci, the biographical adorations of Verdi, Puccini and Mastroianni, and the veneration of Italian love, romance and cuisine. However, Hales charms with a few well-told, sometimes bizarre anecdotes about poets, artists, filmmakers and actors: the terribilità (terrible temper) of Michelangelo, the actor Roberto Benigni's moving reading of Dante's Inferno, Fellini's first job in the circus caring for a sick zebra at ten years old.

A somewhat entertaining but gushing and affected frolic through Italy's rich linguistic past and present.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2009
By interspersing interviews and anecdotes from her life in Italy, Hales, an American journalist and health writer ("An Invitation to Health"), interweaves her story of learning to speak Italian with highlights of the language's development. Hales explores political history, biographies of powerful artistic contributors, the widespread and continued use of local dialects, and, of course, food. Likewise, readers are treated to interviews with the likes of the president of the revered L'Accademia della Crusca, where Hales touched the society's first dictionary, nearly 400 years old. She portrays riveting performances of Dante and Verdi in Rome and Milan, and she describes how she could consistently hear from the mouths of ordinary Italians Dante's or Verdi's beautiful lyrics specifically crafted to be read aloud or sung. A word lover yet not a linguist, Hales offers helpful but not in-depth or technical linguistic background, so the bibliography is valuable. An enthusiastic cultural tour guide and introduction to Italian, this is recommended for public libraries.Marianne Orme, Des Plaines P.L., IL

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