THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

The title is to a certain extent misleading and perhaps even more self-defeating, since this is not primarily a war book and most of it deals with a halcyon hiatus on the Riviera just before the mobilization (World War II). Stationed there is Talbot, young, a little naive, and quite at ease in the army which gives him an ordered sense of life. There's his affair with a captain's wife, Frederique Bon, its Farewell to Arms terminus, and then--briefly--Nancy whom he loves and leaves before going on to the realities of the defeat....A self-effacing book, remembered with gentle resignation, and one that has several transitions to overcome (of time and place).