That's Amore!: Lasagne, Language Trouble, and Love in a 1970s Italian Village

Intent on polishing the table, I didn’t hear the door of the disco open, but the sharp clip of footsteps on the newly laid tiles made me look up. Two tall men wearing expensive dark suits and sunglasses strode purposefully into my vision. ‘This is like a scene from The Godfather,’ I thought as laughter bubbled up in my throat. ‘Where’s the violin case with a rifle?’ Then I noticed that one of them carried a briefcase and suddenly it didn’t seem so funny. I tried to attract Michele’s attention but he’d already seen them. Carefully replacing the records he’d been sorting through in the DJ’s corner, he made his way towards them, gesturing to them to take a seat around one of the modern blue tables. Exchanging looks, they refused. Then the one carrying the briefcase laid it ceremoniously on the counter of the bar. ‘I wish Pietro was here,’ I thought. ‘Why on earth did he have to go to Morbegno this afternoon?’ Worried about Michele and too far away to see or hear anything clearly, I inched forward in the shadows until I almost tripped over a table. With adrenaline pumping through my body and my heart thumping loudly, I sat down where I was, deciding that maybe I shouldn’t interfere after all. The book is a light-hearted view of life in a rural Italian village in the 1970s. It is a picture of an Italy that is long gone. Aged 22, Valerie left a comfortable life in Poole, Dorset, to follow her Italian fiancé to his home in northern Italy. In 1977, Piussogno was a sleepy mountain village where nothing much happened apart from the occasional triple birth of lambs. Valerie's arrival was cause for gossip. The decision to build a disco meant she must be rich and it was also a foregone conclusion that she was pregnant. They were wrong on both fronts. Her new life involved living with her future in-laws, learning both the language and how to drive like an Italian and then the completion of the disco coincided with a visit from the local mafia... The language, the locals and lasagne – That's Amore!