SOURCE: Black, Susan M. “A Dream in Italy.” New Republic 143 (5 December 1960): 20.

In the following excerpt, Black describes The Light in the Piazza as both beautiful and brief.

Margaret Johnson and her daughter Clara are in Italy for a holiday. As a child, Clara was kicked in the head by a pony. Her chronological age is 26; her mental age is 10. Clara meets and quickly falls in love with a Florentine youth, Fabrizio Naccarelli. She knows no Italian, so how is Fabrizio to know her dreary secret? Miss Spencer's novel dramatizes Margaret Johnson's dilemma. She knows that the right thing to do is to put an end to the romance by telling the Naccarelli family of her daughter's condition. And yet … She starts to explain Clara's condition to Fabrizio's father, but at the moment of would-be truth a cannon goes off. She takes her problem to the American consulate and...