Alberto Bevilacqua is an accomplished novelist and, I now know, quite the man about town. This book is all about the women he's known, about how exquisitely sensitive he was and is to them; about men, his friends, and his life. It's full of bragging and posturing. He is pretty good at describing sexual acts, bodies, and female orgasm, but one of those orgasms -- fantastic, never-to-be-forgotten -- he believes he incited in one of the women he writes about was less impressive -- to this reader -- than he intended. (What if she was faking?) I liked his memories of his very young adolescence. This book was adored in Italy but I would guess that they saw right through it in France.