SOURCE: “When Love Goes Wrong,” in Washington Post Book World, September 20, 1998, p. 4.

In the following review, Derbyshire offers a generally positive assessment of Europa, despite the novel's “unsatisfactory ending.”

Tim Parks is an Englishman who has lived most of his adult life in Italy. Since the publication of his first book 13 years ago, he has toiled away in the vineyards of literature, turning out novels (Europa is his ninth), translations, and essays about Italian life. Long residence abroad has freed Parks from the provincialism that afflicts much current British fiction. He has developed a clear and distinctive voice, which he uses to tell stories about the commonplace human psyche under great stress. I cannot say I think as highly of Parks as some of my literary acquaintances, who have praised him very extravagantly; but he is a serious writer working with serious themes, and Europa, in spite of...