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Title: Mixed Up Salad
Review: Though I was prepared to read a good novel that would bring back memories of my visits to Italy, I was quickly bored with the main character, Lucy Stark, and her self-centered yearnings and obsessions. This character clearly hadn't lived much, raised a child, lived through a famine, or experienced much suffering. Her main posture is one of feeling superior, but for no apparent reason. I was fed up with her in a hurry, and skimmed much of the book without losing anything significant. The best parts were observations about art and travelogue-like descriptions of scenes in Rome. The rest of it was the usual blather about love and lust, affairs with romantic Italians (how stereotyped and insulting!), and a "mystery" that amounted to a hill of beans. I advise looking at the beautiful Titian on the cover of the book and then quietly putting it back on the shelf. Want to read a book about affairs? Try Anna Karenina or how about Madame Bovary?
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