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Incontinent on the Continent: My Mother, Her Walker, and Our Grand Tour of Italy
Since the beginning of time, mothers and daughters have had notoriously fraught relationships. ""Show me a mother who says she has a good or great relationship with her daughter,"" Jane Christmas writes, ""and I'll show you a daughter who is in therapy trying to understand how it all went so horribly wrong.""
To smooth over five decades of constant clashing, Christmas takes...more
To smooth over five decades of constant clashing, Christmas takes...more
Paperback, 303 pages
Published
August 24th 2009
by Greystone Books
(first published 2009)
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I expected to really like this book after hearing Jane English interviewed on The Final Chapter. I didn't.
Have travelled with my mother who sounds not unlike my own in terms of interests, I was ready to slap her for her self-centredness.
Yes, Jane, you too will get to this age and be unsure on your feet, undecided, tired and unable to keep up on all activities. Let's hope your kids are more tolerant.
In fact, about half way through the book, I was about to give up on it as I was so tired of the...more
Have travelled with my mother who sounds not unlike my own in terms of interests, I was ready to slap her for her self-centredness.
Yes, Jane, you too will get to this age and be unsure on your feet, undecided, tired and unable to keep up on all activities. Let's hope your kids are more tolerant.
In fact, about half way through the book, I was about to give up on it as I was so tired of the...more
I don't always leave a review, but when I do ...
Okay. This book caught my eye because I've recently become addicted to travel memoirs. I can barely read fiction anymore, but I can zip through a travel memoir like nobody's business. I had such high hopes for the book. I mean, Italy! Referencing bodily functions right in the title! Italy! How could something go wrong?
I know the author is Canadian, but honestly, as I was reading I felt like I was seeing evidence of why foreign countries bemoan Amer...more
Okay. This book caught my eye because I've recently become addicted to travel memoirs. I can barely read fiction anymore, but I can zip through a travel memoir like nobody's business. I had such high hopes for the book. I mean, Italy! Referencing bodily functions right in the title! Italy! How could something go wrong?
I know the author is Canadian, but honestly, as I was reading I felt like I was seeing evidence of why foreign countries bemoan Amer...more
This was a quick and entertaining read. The 50-something year-old author took a six-week tour of Italy with her elderly and disabled mother. I enjoyed the travelogue aspect of the book but it was also the story of their ongoing poor relationship and the daughter’s hoped-for resolution and reconciliation. The author struck me as very selfish and whiney but she was very honest and I liked the book in spite of her irritability and impatience with her mother, and at times with Italy. It must have be...more
Just before he died, Jane’s father asked her to try to have a better relationship with her mother. They weren’t exactly estranged, but they’d never been terribly close. Jane felt her mom was overly critical and had never expressed any affection for her children. Jane’s mom, on the other hand, felt that Jane was single-minded, stubborn, and foolhardy. Jane thought she and her mother might bond over a trip abroad – to Italy – where they could reconnect, work on their relationship, and enjoy the ar...more
A sometimes funny, bittersweet account of a fifty-something daughter taking her aging. incontinent mother on a six week driving tour of Italy. Many readers have criticized the author for being impatient, whiny and unsympathetic to her ageing mother and her constantly changing medical and mental issues. Anyone who has cared for a parent over the long haul, including ever-increasing senility, incontinence and a lack of awareness by that parent of his/her ever-increasing limitations, should cut thi...more
I heard an interview with the author on the radio and thought that this would be an interesting and humourous read. I expected some rough patches on the trip taken by Jane and her older mother who suffers from several medical conditions. What I did not expect was almost 300 pages of negativity and whining (the book totals 303 pages, so I'll give her a few pages for positive descriptions).
I will now be in search of more books about travel in Italy in order to remove the sour taste left by Inconti...more
I will now be in search of more books about travel in Italy in order to remove the sour taste left by Inconti...more
Want to read about a sour mother-daughter relationship? This book is for you. Want to read about Italy and the travelers' experience there, forget it.
I love travel writing, but this was much more a story of the travels of two miserable women who spend six weeks being miserable with each other in one of the most wonderful places I know. Both are selfish. The daughter assists her demanding, cruel, selfish mother and then resents her because she cannot travel as she'd like. The mother, on the other...more
I love travel writing, but this was much more a story of the travels of two miserable women who spend six weeks being miserable with each other in one of the most wonderful places I know. Both are selfish. The daughter assists her demanding, cruel, selfish mother and then resents her because she cannot travel as she'd like. The mother, on the other...more
Mar 03, 2013
Blogdramedy
added it
Started well...enjoyed the sarcastic humour however it quickly went downhill for me. Lots of whinging about the author's mother and her inability to cope with traveling in Italy. Hard to imagine...elderly, hard of hearing (and refuses to wear a hearing aid), uses a cane and a walker (but could really use a wheelchair), 16 different medications daily, and can't walk up three stone steps without gasping for breath. Why on earth someone would put their mother (and themselves) through something like...more
This book is about a middle-aged woman and her elderly mother touring around Italy, but is not a travel book. It is really focused on their relationship with each other and happens to be set in Italy. They hardly seem to have left their hotels and villas, and when they did leave they didn't seem overly impressed with where they visited, so don't expect to be dazzled by Italy here.
This book was funny most of the time but also thoughtful and sad at times. Another reason to fear aging. Reading some...more
This book was funny most of the time but also thoughtful and sad at times. Another reason to fear aging. Reading some...more
To smooth over five decades of constant clashing, Christmas takes her arthritic, incontinent, and domineering mother, Valeria -- a cross between Queen Victoria and Hyacinth Bucket of the British comedy Keeping Up Appearances -- on a tour of Italy.
Neither has been to Italy before, but both are fans of ancient art, architecture, and history. Will gazing at the fruits of the Italian Renaissance be enough to spark a renaissance in their relationship? As they wander along the winding Amalfi Coast, tr...more
Neither has been to Italy before, but both are fans of ancient art, architecture, and history. Will gazing at the fruits of the Italian Renaissance be enough to spark a renaissance in their relationship? As they wander along the winding Amalfi Coast, tr...more
I have to admit, up until the last chapter of the book, I would've given the book two stars. For a majority of it, Jane Christmas complains about how Italy doesn't live up to her expectations and the difficulties of managing a disabled mother in accessible-unfriendly Italy. Her constant allusions of mother-daughter pairs she sees on the road or town attitudes or statues to her own relationship with her mother were at best awkwardly paced and reflected upon. But the last chapter makes much of the...more
The author takes her mother on a six-week tour of Italy. Things don't always go as planned, and tempers flare, but throughout the voyage they both come to a better understanding of one another. At times humorous, at times undeniably bittersweet, anyone who is a daughter or a mother of a daughter will identify with the relationship and love/hate interaction of these two travelers. I particularly enjoyed the book because it took me back to some of the places I have been to in Italy, and it was a g...more
It's interesting to see how much Ms. Christmas and her mother are alike. It's clear her mother has always been critical and has expected "better" from her daughter - and her adult daughter treats her mother much the same way. How often we unwittingly reproduce our family scenario! I can't help wondering how this has reproduced itself in the relationship between Ms. Christmas and her children. (I remember an uncle of mine who was rigid,intolerant and overbearing with his children; when they were...more
I am enjoying this book because I like to increase my knowledge of places and geography. What I don't enjoy about this book is that Jane Christmas frets a little too much I believe about how travelling with her Mother is limiting her (Jane's) experience of the trip. But then it also seems that she was not totally aware of deterioration in her Mother before she invited her on a month long tour in Italy. She has become painfully aware that many sites in Italy are not handicap accessed and also th...more
Jane Christmas, the 50-something author, takes her 80-year-old mother on a 6-week trip to Italy to reconcile and refresh their relationship. I identified with Jane in her struggles to propel the sightseeing when her infirm mother was too tired or ill (or stubborn?) to go on. Many reviewers are critical of Jane, citing poor planning, unreasonable expectations of her mother, rough or rude behavior - but have they traveled to Europe with Mom as I did, when Mom was 75??
I really enjoyed this book but I wanted to give both women a shake and ask what the hell were you thinking. The mother is in denial about how infirmed she is and the author has no clue. It appears the trip was a bad idea in terms of compatibility.
The touring part of the book was good. It concentrated more on southern Italy. Their experiences in Siena and Florence were not great which I found odd because I loved both of them when I was there,
The touring part of the book was good. It concentrated more on southern Italy. Their experiences in Siena and Florence were not great which I found odd because I loved both of them when I was there,
I'm not too sure I would have the nerve to schedule a six week tour of Italy with someone that I had a slightly rocky relationship with, but it makes an interesting book. Christmas and her mother were on their own for a trip that would exasperate, annoy, and yet entertain the two of them. It was not a trip of their dreams--it rained, it froze, it snowed (This was in the spring), the food was not always good, the service was often not what they expected, but still it was an eye-opening experience...more
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I wouldn't recommend this book. I though I would enjoy it after my trip to Italy. But I found the author did too much complaining about how horrible it was to take care of and travel with her Mom. I was hoping there would at least be some kind of catharsis in the end but there was very little to justify a whole book of complaining.
Definitely a mixed bag - I was bugged by the author's total lack of understanding of her mother's needs and what it would be to take her elderly mother traveling, rather than on a vacation where they could relax in an interesting location. On the other hand, some of her observations about traveling were quite humorous.
Actually, I'm enjoying this more than I thought I would. The author's insights into her Canadian family's dynamics and her difficult relationship with her mother would be enough, but the Italian travelogue has rekindled my desire to travel the southern part of Italy before I'm incontinent.
-not a flattering look at travel in Italy (it poured with rain, the food was horrible) but a good, true-to-life portrayal of a relationship of a middle aged daughter and her elderly mother. The troubled past history was not resolved but in the end new memories were made.
I picked this up at the library in the Italy section. I thought it would make better plane reading than Frommer's Italy. You don't really learn anything about the country, just that the food is bad, they overcharge you and aren't equipped for disabled people.
I chuckled my way through this one. My husband kept calling out, "What's so funny?". I love the brutal honesty of Jane taking care of her mother while trying to have a life-changing 6 week tour of Italy. I also loved her discriptions of the country and it's quirks.
I had hoped that this would be a light funny travel book but found it rather a tortuous read about the trials and tribulations of a woman who takes her elderly mother on a trip to Italy. They both complain alot and seem to have a miserable time.
All I could think when I read this was, "Why? Why would you want to do that?" Not so much a travel memoir as a dealing-with-aging-parents memoir. Maybe someone with aging parents would appreciate it more?
I really did not like this book. Actually it was the author I didn't like and being that it is a memoir of her trip with her elderly, diabled mother to Italy for 6 weeks that means I did not like the book. The author is mean spirited and the whole book she complained about her mother's attitude, mothering skills and especially her disability. Admittedly her mom was a bit of a pain but give me a break, none of this should have been news to the daughter and htis trip was her idea! She also complai...more
Good descriptions of frustrations dealing with aging parent who is no longer up to speed. Daughter too absorbed in own life to understand needs of others. Made Italy out as a not-so-desirable place to visit; hard to believe. Suffered from "ugly American" syndrome by writing about how stupid Italians are for doing things as they do and not as North Americans do. Partial redemption at end when daughter able to come to terms with needs of mother. Humorous.
At times humorous, at times sad, this is an account of a six-week trip to Italy undertaken by the author with her mother.
I usually really enjoy Jane Christmas' books but I found her to be cranky and miserable in this one.
Highly entertaining, especially for any woman who has a volatile relationship with their mother.
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May 10, 2012 09:25pm