JM Lin Reviews:

An Italian Affair
by Laura Fraser

An Italian Affair by Laura Fraser is a funny, sexy, and endearing memoir.
Travel journalist Laura Fraser has just been dumped by her husband, as he's decided he's still in love with his highschool sweetheart. To assuage her wounded heart, Laura takes a trip to Italy, where her Italian friends suggest she just needs a good Italian lover. She settles for a relaxing trip to the island of Ischia, instead.
But, as she's about to leave, she meets M., a married art professor. She enjoys talking to him, even puts off her return to the mainland to spend the day with him. And, when he tells her his room number, she finds herself there.
But, certainly this is just a one-time fling for a man with a bad marriage? Laura returns to her life in San Francisco, to the miserable status of divorcee-trying-to-find-date. And she lets us in on the lowlights of her forrays.
But, fortunately, M. is not gone. And, over the next few years, they manage to rendezvous in London, Marrakech, Milan, the Aeolian Islands, even San Francisco.
As a travel journalist, Laura gives us a peak into all the places she visits, not only the food and the scenery, but also the attitudes of the people. I laughed out-loud several times, including most memorably when one Italian decides "Laura" is not a very Italian name and insists on calling her Molly.
Molly also gives us a peak at ourselves, through Italian eyes--at our national obsession with the sex lives of people in power; the way we snack all the time; how little poetry we learn in school; how we've managed to complicate the most mundane aspects of our lives.
When Laura orders an extra-hot latte with half-decaf, low fat, no foam, Professor M says, "So complicated! You're torturing these people working at the coffee bar. Why don't you just order coffee?"
Written like an extended travel-logue, the Italian Affair is a fun escape to places where there's sun, sand, romance, and always something to laugh about. I'm still smiling.