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Diversions in Sicily
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
173 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1920
About the author
Henry Festing Jones
67 booksHenry Festing Jones was an English solicitor and writer, known as the friend and posthumous biographer of Samuel Butler.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 17, 2017
So boring! He spends half the book rambling about puppets.
August 3, 2013
An odd book, interesting but lopsided in its structure, about a Victorian-era tourist's time in Sicily, and his friendship with a particular Sicilian waiter. The book is eventually revealed to be written for his godson, to explain how the waiter met his wife, but on that level it makes little sense. Why tell a Sicilian boy how Sicilian marionettes work, and spend chapter after chapter on their stories, when he will experience them himself?
As a work for English readers, it doesn't have quite enough of the other to make it interesting as a travel diary. The main fellow, aside from some racism, is an unassuming sort, and he is surrounded by generous and happy people. There is no real goal or disappointment in it, and so no real conflict. Perhaps, like some of Twain's books, it is ruined by television: none of the marvels are still marvellous, because we have seen them. Maybe it's that Italians are not some mysterious people, who live months away by road, doing odd things and eating odd things and worshipping odd things, as they were for Jones, but are people we know and work with, and whose customs are unremarkable. At the time the book must have been popular, because a sequel was written.
The reader of the Librivox version is brilliant, though, and shows that a good reader can draw you in to even quite sparse material.
This review originally appeared on book coasters.
As a work for English readers, it doesn't have quite enough of the other to make it interesting as a travel diary. The main fellow, aside from some racism, is an unassuming sort, and he is surrounded by generous and happy people. There is no real goal or disappointment in it, and so no real conflict. Perhaps, like some of Twain's books, it is ruined by television: none of the marvels are still marvellous, because we have seen them. Maybe it's that Italians are not some mysterious people, who live months away by road, doing odd things and eating odd things and worshipping odd things, as they were for Jones, but are people we know and work with, and whose customs are unremarkable. At the time the book must have been popular, because a sequel was written.
The reader of the Librivox version is brilliant, though, and shows that a good reader can draw you in to even quite sparse material.
This review originally appeared on book coasters.
February 8, 2015
An enjoyable travel journal written at the turn of the twentieth century, at about the time that my grandparents emigrated from Sicily. It was fun to read about the customs and traditions of the Sicily that they called home, and many of those ancient festivals are still celebrated today in that beautiful country.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews