There are some delightful moments in the book - how could you live in a villa in Arezzo and not encounter them? - but they are marred by the whining, by the hatchet job on Sicily (believe it or not, other people living in or visiting Sicily don't spend their time looking for a Mafia Don around every corner), as well as by other less direct hints that the author is, in the end, just another visitor with money who lacks the soul of an Italian.