Eros

A bestseller in Italy, this lyric exploration of sexuality--part memoir, part unabashed erotica, part rarefied meditation--will probably resonate less intensely with a U.S. readership. In a mosaic of sexual encounters, vignettes, memory fragments, parables and conversations, Italian novelist/poet/filmmaker Bevilacqua reminisces on his boyhood sexual awakening and former lovers, with passing commentary on jealousy, the joys of auto-eroticism and oral sex, erotic slang and women's secret fantasies. He muses on society's growing romantic and personal desperation, heightened by the breakdown of community. For Bevilacqua, eros, when it fuses sex and love, is a way of remembering our best selves by sharing a primordial identity with the beloved. Poetic ecstasies alternate with unsettling images of eros perverted: child prostitution in Africa, voyeurism, newspaper sex scandals and murder scandals. McGarrell's musical translation of this impassioned hymn to eros felicitously conveys Bevilacqua's sensuous, literary style. The author's lavish admiration of women's body parts, his frequent characterization of women as seducers, betrayers or teases, and his interpretation of female bisexuality as a form of narcissism may explain why some Italian feminists attacked Eros, while others praised it. (Nov.)