Adventures of a Polyglot

A cosmopolitan par excellence, Giovanna Sodi Phillips takes the reader through the tragicomic adventures of her vivid life. From a Tuscan childhood shared with a younger brother, their American musician mother, their Italian officer father and a succession of French au-pairs, she leads us through her years at a strict Swiss convent, her adolescence at the often hilarious Liceo Dante in Florence, through romances at Smith College to two years in Rome’s fascinating diplomatic world, culminating in her “marriage miracle.” The author’s portrayal of life in New York as a “museum wife” with three children brings on a new cast of characters: the curators, collectors and dealers in the couple’s social set, and the foreign help “at home” who involve the family in their own often touching, at times heart-rending sentimental adventures. More colorful encounters await us when the author and her husband move to Palm Beach. Here she creates Les Girls, a group of women from different countries, missing their own habitat and “becoming American” together. The association is currently fifty nations strong and quite unique. Each episode of this multicultural life has the vivid, humorous, and heartwarming detail to make the book an unforgettable experience.