Alberto Bevilacqua's novels have the force and immediacy of experiences relived through memory. Although his dominating narrators often leave little room for the reader's involvement and interpretation and sometimes subject experiences to such intense psychological scrutiny that the progress of the plot is slowed, Bevilacqua draws readers into his work through the fluency and richness of his style, which seems especially engaging when he writes of his native city of Parma. He writes of marital relationships, existential crises, the inner life, and in his later works of paranormal phenomena. The enviable success of Bevilacqua's novels, from Questa specie d'amore (This Sort of Love, 1966) to I sensi incantati (Bewitched, 1991), can be attributed only in part to his fame as a television commentator and as a contributor to popular magazines. The clarity of his writing and his storytelling ability are appreciated by the educated middle- and upper-class readers who make...