** Cleverly constructed, but often precious in a bad writing-seminar way: “spoors of grease” “Vesuvius reposed benignly” “pizza draped in buffalo mozzarella” “mosquito-flecked summers” “a skein of backstreets” “churches blistered with grime” “moldering palazzi” Some details rang false: I can believe an art historian who wants to write about Fragonard, but not one who wants to write about “art.” And the epigraphs from Proust are pompous.