Bagheria

This memoir is crowded with recollections of Bagheria, the Sicilian hometown where the author's family had been nobility and to which they returned impoverished in 1947 after spending two years in a Japanese concentration camp during WWII. Italian novelist Maraini evokes the beautiful landscape, gardens and mansions, dips into the town's history and tracks down some of her living relatives and ancestors-rebels, tories and eccentrics among them. She deftly skims such topics as the sexual advances made to her as a child by adults, as well as her obsessive adoration of her often-absent father. Although perceptive and lyrical, the book-a best seller in Italy in 1993-is also somewhat hurried and provides more details of the affairs of a minor Sicilian nobility in a remote town than many American readers will care to know. (Apr.)