The title might promise A Year In Liguria, but Julia Blackburn's account of life in remotest Northern Italy has little in the way of fish-out-of-water comedy and rustic quaintness. Instead, Blackburn, having befriended the elderly residents of her new home, writes down their memories of a savage past with touching empathy, recording a cruel feudal system that left them as "mezzadri" or "half-people" under the rule of the lordly padrone, or the time of fascists and partisans which brought with it fear, death and a constant hunger barely alleviated by chestnuts and dormice. The present is in many ways equally treacherous, as family members die in sudden accidents or after long illnesses, and Blackburn's own husband is diagnosed with throat cancer. It is a precarious world that she describes, with people as out of control as the cars speeding blindly down mountain roads. Yet somehow, she succeeds in finding a balance in the middle of all this dangerous tumult and sudden violence, revelling both in the natural beauty around her and the ability of people to survive.