Laura Fraser: An Italian Affair

By FIONA HAWTIN

It used to be enough to see the Eiffel Tower or the Pyramids. Now, it seems, travel must also be sensual, if these two books are anything to go by.

Laura Fraser felt this true-life novel, An Italian Affair, about her affair with a married French professor, across several continents, would be a good read.

People should kiss and tell only if it is an utterly sordid love affair or a tale so gripping Hollywood could make a movie out of it. This is neither.

The action starts with the break-up of her marriage. She takes herself off to the Italian island of Ischia, meets the professor and begins a series of rendezvous in fabulously romantic places including Milan, Paris, London, Marrakesh and San Francisco.

The locations would certainly make a beautiful-looking movie. But the affair is a little too timid and Fraser is too engrossed in herself for any real passion to be evoked.

And she has the most annoying way of narration. Everything is "you."

"You wait for the professor on the terrace of the hotel."

"You watch the sky." "You slip on your dress ... "

"You" wish the professor had dumped her after their first night together and that's not just because "you're" jealous.

Ebury Press

$49.95