A beautiful book on erotic passion that has sold more than 300,000 copies in Italy!
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
A bestseller in Italy, this lyric exploration of sexuality?part memoir, part unabashed erotica, part rarefied meditation?will probably resonate less intensely with a U.S. readership. In a mosaic of sexual encounters, vignettes, memory fragments, parables and conversations, Italian novelist/poet/filmmaker Bevilacqua reminisces on his boyhood sexual awakening and former lovers, with passing commentary on jealousy, the joys of auto-eroticism and oral sex, erotic slang and women's secret fantasies. He muses on society's growing romantic and personal desperation, heightened by the breakdown of community. For Bevilacqua, eros, when it fuses sex and love, is a way of remembering our best selves by sharing a primordial identity with the beloved. Poetic ecstasies alternate with unsettling images of eros perverted: child prostitution in Africa, voyeurism, newspaper sex scandals and murder scandals. McGarrell's musical translation of this impassioned hymn to eros felicitously conveys Bevilacqua's sensuous, literary style. The author's lavish admiration of women's body parts, his frequent characterization of women as seducers, betrayers or teases, and his interpretation of female bisexuality as a form of narcissism may explain why some Italian feminists attacked Eros, while others praised it.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
"Don't take offense," the well-known Italian novelist Bevilacqua writes as he plunges into a lifetime's memory of erotic encounters. "What does storytelling mean, especially telling certain stories?" His "certain stories" are moments of perfect pleasure achieved by opening himself to the possibilities of human connection?in a glance, the contemplation of a woman's body, or in feelings of pity or remorse. For Bevilacqua, sex is the "primal, irresistible" act that favors the silences and confessions that, in turn, engender poetry. He culls from regional legends, hearsay, gossip, and his most intimate evocations of first love and longing in his native Parma. For example, he tells the story of ugly Pietro and his fetish for keeping tufts of pubic hair like trophies from his conquests. There is much play in Bevilacqua's work, and pokes at the sanctimonious mores of his country; when speaking of fantasies or fetishes, he can even assume the knowing tone of a psychiatrist. Published in Italy to best-seller acclaim and smoothly translated here, these lyrical musings of an aging man on what once was or could have been are heartbreakingly beautiful. For literature collections.?Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Sexual braggadocio from a smart, conceited Italian,
By A Customer
This review is from: Eros (Hardcover)
Alberto Bevilacqua is an accomplished novelist and, I now know, quite the man about town. This book is all about the women he's known, about how exquisitely sensitive he was and is to them; about men, his friends, and his life. It's full of bragging and posturing. He is pretty good at describing sexual acts, bodies, and female orgasm, but one of those orgasms -- fantastic, never-to-be-forgotten -- he believes he incited in one of the women he writes about was less impressive -- to this reader -- than he intended. (What if she was faking?) I liked his memories of his very young adolescence. This book was adored in Italy but I would guess that they saw right through it in France.
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