Tim Parks has been a novelist (the Booker Prize shortlisted Europa), a translator (Italian authors from Machiavelli to Italo Calvino) and the author of several previous nonfiction books about Italy, where he has lived for the past thirty years. Here, he writes about taking trains. It's a convenient excuse for the minutae that comprise the soul of a country. The author writes with the careful accounting of a novelist who is always taking notes on a frustrating machine or a good conversation; you never know when a good bit may come in useful. Here, they do. Parks has a translator's close ear for the details of language, and the primary delight of the book is to listen along with it. The stranger's sense of the unexpected and the ridiculous in words combines with a native's ability to gather every nuance from an upside-down headline, a conversational gambit between a reserved Roman girl and a crew of young Veronese soccer fans, or the thousand-and-first international tourist getting off at the wrong stop while the Italian recorded announcer reads the English names out loud in a full-throated parody of a British aristocrat. It's an enjoyable ride under the tutelage of a thoughtful guide who has renounced his Englishness in all things but an expatriate's dry wit, and very good fun for readers who appreciate the New Yorker. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Read Less