Jencey's Corner

Ecco, most of the reviews of The Italian Party have overlooked your role in the book. Please describe what you do in the story, and tell us how you feel about being overlooked.  I’d like to bite someone right in the leg. First of all, I’m the true star of the book! I’m a fox terrier, so I’m incredibly feisty and adorable and always present in the story—even when Scottie is zooming around the Tuscan countryside on a scooter, I’m right there, ears flapping in the wind. My name means “Here he is.” I play a crucial role in the book. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the scene in which I first enter Scottie and Michael’s life is very important—they discover how rural Italians live, and how people of that era (1950s) are being forced to leave the country and move to the cities to find work. Michael’s job as a tractor salesman is part of the postwar Italian “economic miracle” that mechanized agriculture, which was good for profits but meant a lot of farmworkers lost their jobs. Tha...