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An Italian Affair

An Italian Affair

List Price: $12.95
Your Price: $9.71
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Laura's Affair
Review: I can only imagine that Laura Fraser had an affair with the publisher to get this piece of work printed. This poorly written tale of woe will leave the reader completely comprehending why this woman had no friends.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: You enjoyed this breezy little fantasy
Review: Imagine you are going through a divorce yourself and fantasizing about spending a month in Italy where you will get over your loss by letting a man charm you at every village you visit. Browsing through the guidebooks you chance upon Laura Frasers memoir and promptly snap it up.

Imagine your horror, when, after flipping through the first 20 pages you realize that Fraser is going to tell you her whole story in the second person. How annoying, you think. How willing she was to take the easy way out.

But you read on anyway, entertained by her little tale. Never quite understanding what exactly it was she saw in the professor. Wondering why their lovemaking sounds so bland and boring.

When you come to the part where she meets a really cute and sexy 100 percent Italian man who is AVAILABLE but she passes him up, you understand why Fraser wrote in the second person. You too would be embarrassed to own up to such foolishness.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Unsure...
Review: First let me say that I did enjoy reading this memoir of travel and love.

But I wasn't really able to FEEL why Laura fell for the professor in the first place. I understand why she began an affair with him - being on the rebound from her failed marriage. I can see why she repeated her encounters with him, they seemed to be good travel companions and liked the same things most of the time. But why the professor? Why not, for example, Fabio, the music teacher she meets while visiting Stromboli?

Maybe Laura Fraser wrote this book when she had already put a considerable emotional distance between herself and the professor, but at least for me this story didn't sizzle enough emotionally. Maybe it was also because she wrote the book in the "you" form, avoiding the much more personal "I" perspective...

Throughout the book I was trying hard to understand what made the professor so special in her eyes - and ultimately failed to see it. This is not to say that the book doesn't have its highlights but interestingly, at least for me, these highlights are almost always things that are outside the relationship, things that have nothing to do with the professor, who appears to be more self-involved than anything else anyway.

Laura Fraser's memoir somewhat reminded me of a French novel with a similar topic that was a bestseller in Europe in the early 90s: "Salt on Our Skin" by Benoite Groult. Although a novel, it is a lot more emotionally intense than Ms. Fraser's book. It's out of print, but if you can find a copy grab it - it's really worth it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Center of My Heart
Review: I've never been more moved by a non-fiction book. Fraser takes us right there, right to the center of her heart. Sometimes I want to kick her for all the wasted thinking she spends on her fink ex-husband, but her healing process is completed during the course of a novel. I was with her every step of the way, rooting. The only down side to the book is that for her to write another account as moving, she'd have to go through more bad experiences! Hopefully, Fraser will switch to fiction or write non-fiction accounts about somebody else.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Take the time to smell the roses
Review: I bought this book as an escape and it truly was. From the beautiful descriptions of the places she visits and the food she eats, Laura Fraser weaves a compelling tale that hooks the reader from the beginning. Wronged at the beginning of the book, Fraser starts out weak. But through her travels and her relationship with M., she becomes a stronger person. There is nothing wrong with leaning on someone or using their zest for life to make you stronger. That is what you should take from Fraser's autobiographical story. You should look at every day, every place as a pleasure. I have to admit, since taking her advise, I feel better about everything.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Wasted my time
Review: Truly a Sad tale writen by a woman whose husband left her for his true love, his high school sweet heart. (Judged by this book, he did the right thing.) Laura Fraser's "Italian Affair" is nothing special, and very uninteresting. Now Fraser's book rests in my Trash can on its way to the city dump. It is a boring story of a middle age woman who travel thorugh Italy alone. We all have similar experiences in Italy, but not all of us will be so available nor insensitive enough to write about these boring encounters. I know I will not read anything written by Laura Fraser ever again in the future. At least I gained this knowledge.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Grazie Miss Fraser
Review: I loved reading about Italy and the other places she visited with the Professor. This book was a fun read. Laura's husband left her for another woman. Laura did something I would love to do after a breakup, she went to Europe to visit friends and did a lot of traveling by herself. [This book has given me the inspiration to one day soon travel to Italy by myself.] While visiting she met her Italian lover, Professor M. What an affair. The places they met in were too interesting. This is a good book to read if you are lonely for Italy. I was yearning for Italy after visiting last year in November, I came across this book and decided to read it to help me get through this period of yearning and it helped a lot, so theraputic for me. Signed, going back to Italy.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I'm in love with "An Italian Affair!"
Review: I finished reading this book on Saturday night, and I've been sad ever since. This book was a joy to read from start to finish.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An Italian Vacation... and then some...
Review: Laura Fraser's autobiographical memoir of finding love in the most wonderful of places (literally!) with a French Art Professor is a real treat of a book. We should all thank her for sharing her remarkable experiences around the globe with her intelligent and eloquent Frenchman at her side.. it makes for a fascinating read...

It was lovely to be able to see her go from wounded newly-separated wife to a freer and more open version of herself, at first drawn to love and sex and ideas with her new companion, and then ready to take on the rest of her life, bouyant, rejuvenated, and hopeful, when the chapter in her life that is this book comes to an end. A real treat.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An Italian Affair
Review: Freelance magazine writer Fraser tweaks a few details (people's names and identifying characteristics) but retains the flavor of falling madly and unexpectedly in love with a stranger after her husband left her for his high school sweetheart. Nursing her broken heart in Italy, Fraser met an aesthetics professor from Paris, and together they traveled from one exotic spot to another, enjoying delicious food, sex, and conversation. Fraser's memoir/travelogue (written, in mildly eccentric fashion, in the second person) describes how the affair and travels helped her come to terms with her dissolving marriage and begin to get on with her life.


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