The Woman Who Looked Like Sophia L.: An E-mail Romanza

Leviant (Me, Mo, Mu, Ma, & Mod) offers a witty meditation on romantic infatuation. Giorgio, a middle-aged American author who understands more Italian than he can speak, has a chance encounter with a beautiful woman named Sofia by the beach in Parma. To Giorgio, with her voluptuous body and orange bikini, Sofia bears an uncanny resemblance to the actor Sophia Loren. She notices Giorgio reading an Italian translation of his own novel The Yemenite Girl (also the title of one of Leviant’s novels), and excitedly shares that she’s reading it, too. After Giorgio tells Sofia he’s the author, they continue talking and flirting. The two vow to keep in touch by email; she says she wants to send him some of her writing in English and get his reaction. Giorgio interprets Sofia’s typos, misspellings, and broken idioms as Freudian slips that belie her romantic feelings for him, though her missives, peppered with effusive “caro”s and “baci” and “abbrazzos,” seem mainly to bemoan her inability to leave her husband or break up with her lover. Though the romance feels largely illusory and therefore inconsequential, the pair’s comical correspondence builds to a revealing portrait of hopeless wish fulfillment. This amusing anti–fairy tale has its moments. (Feb.)