A House in Sicily

In this charming memoir, Phelps recounts how she indirectly inherited a villa in Taormina shortly after the end of WWII. Her uncle, who had originally purchased the land and built the house, left no will, so the villa went to the author's aunt. Realizing that her aunt had no interest in the property, Phelps, who is British, headed to Sicily with the intent to sell but ended up as enchanted with the area and the property as her uncle had been. She turned the house into an inn in order to make enough money to maintain it, and later she received many famous guests, Roald Dahl among them. Phelps is clearly well integrated into Taormina after 50 years, and she lovingly and teasingly depicts her companions. Concetta, who has worked for the author for three decades, is a no-nonsense woman who initially insisted she couldn't serve as cook because she knew how to prepare only Sicilian food. Phelps, who was a social worker before moving to Italy, has a keen anthropological eye. Her portrait of a local Mafia don, who has no phone but instructs her simply to phone his village's main operator if she needs to reach him, manages to be both humorous and serious. Another chapter on the local police forces--carabinieri, the sanitary police, the financial police, etc.--captures Italy's bureaucracy beautifully. Since chapters are organized by topic, occasionally the date of certain events is unclear, but otherwise, this is a refreshing look at a place that so many have stereotyped and so few have known as well as Phelps. Illustrations. not seen by PW. (Sept.)