My mother discovered this book and kept it on her bedside table, along with West with the Night (which I have not read), Out of Africa (which I have not read), and The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow (which I will write about some time). This stack of books tells you almost everything you need to know about my mother. Oh, except she also had a copy of Irving Wallace’s The Word (which I have read but will not be writing about). When she died, that was the only book from her past that I found on her shelves, the others were long gone.

Anyhow, she kept telling me to read this book, that I would love it; and I kept telling her, sure, right, okay, and not reading it because, often, when I did things my mother told me to, they didn’t turn out well. They may have worked for her but they didn’t work for me. Finally, trapped in her house where I had gone to have my tonsils out, with nothing of my own to read because she packed my books away into the basement when she moved into this house, desperately bored, I picked it up and read it. And it went home with me when I left. Since then, I’ve picked up additional copies at used book sales, and I’m always keeping my eye out for it. The idea is that I’ll be able to share it with friends that I think will appreciate it, and won’t have to worry about getting it back.*

I also secretly hope I’ll run into a famous movie director and hand her a copy, with a whispered nod: this one, you’ve got to make this one… This book is crying out to be made into a movie – only, please god, don’t let them “modernize” it. In fact, it’s so cinematic that I searched for many years, sure it must have been made into a movie already, but I don’t think it has. Perhaps it’s been shopped around – like Good Omens was, for so long – and finally disappeared into some Hollywood-version of the Bermuda triangle.

This book is set in Tuscany, during the late 70’s / early ’80s, amongst the expat community who had discovered rural Italy before the Under the Tuscan Sun (nope) popularized it. El (a writer), and her best friend, Lacey (a film editor), find it ridiculous (and somewhat exasperating) that Italian authorities don’t take women seriously. When there are bank robberies – a common occurrence in those days – El and Lacey are waved past roadblocks until one day, in baggy men’s shirts, hair up under hats, they are pulled over until the police realize that they are women.

What a great idea for a script, they decide, and write it up.

When they run into writer’s block, they bounce ideas off their friends: Caroline (an English rose who has married the local Italian Conte and treats the Italian community as if it were an English country village); Hermione (a feminist who looks like Raquel Welsh, renowned for her sexual antics); Kate (a political analyst, managing 100 things at once, including her writer-husband and teenaged son); and finally, Martha (a journalist and perpetual sofa-surfer).

The six of them fight out the details of the script: the bank robbers might need identification to open Swiss bank accounts, how hard would that be? Someone orders fake IDs to prove it isn’t hard. What about disguises? Someone else picks them up at a town market nearby. How would they slow down the guards? Someone picks up upholstery tacks to sprinkle on the road and take out their tires. They don’t set out to commit train robbery – they just get carried away trying to prove that it’s plausible. For the script…

And then it works and they smuggle the money over the border into Swiss bank accounts. And then they sit back, pleased that it all worked, and it occurs to them: they did it.

Now what?

They didn’t do it for the money. Most of them didn’t need money. And now they’re looking over their shoulders all the time. And the police are starting to suspect a group of local expat teens, upper-class slacker boys, including Kate’s son, Alan…

So they need to give the money back. But how?

This book is hilarious. They skewer the women, their husbands and boyfriends, expat Americans and Brits, the Italian police and government. Often when you read books written by someone outside the community – white man writing about rustic locals – it comes off as “look at these amusing people with their quaint ways.” But here, the Italians are written as fully fleshed out characters, who can be amusing but are often more amused by these quaint foreigners among them. Perhaps that’s because Cornelisen lived in Italy for so long, herself.

I don’t read much that would be shelved in the “Fiction & Literature” department of your local bookstore – I lean towards the genres (Mystery, SciFi, Fantasy, Horror, Romance, even Westerns), children’s and non-fiction. This is one of the few exceptions in my library.

I like that these women are brilliant, successful, clever, resourceful, empathetic towards others, funny, and entertaining at dinner parties – women that you’d like in your social circle, that you’d want to be friends with. And they have relatable challenges: husbands that demand babying; men treat them like their brains are cute, unable to fathom the complex worlds that men live in; teens that drive them to their wit’s end; they are overly-responsible, taking on all too much in their lives, their careers, their families. Even the glamourous Hermione wants it all – and is in danger of getting it.

I highly recommend this book – although you may need to poke around libraries, used bookstores, or book sales for it.

It’s worth the search.

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^{*I loaned my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring – the edition with the Tolkien artwork on the cover – to a friend, I don’t remember who. And never got it back and had to replace it with that edition with that horrible green cover with the artwork that makes Frodo look drunk or witless. I don’t loan books anymore. If I like you, I’ll give you a copy – I’ll even buy you a copy – but I won’t loan you a book, no matter how much I love you.}