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"The Bella Lingua" is a story about some American expatriates in Rome, and their feelings that they belong (or not) in the place where they are living. Cheever lived unhappily in Italy for a year, and he nailed the portrayal of a stereotypical American tourist in Uncle George from Iowa.

Wilson Streeter is an American statistician taking Italian lessons from a young widowed expatriate with a fifteen-year-old son. The boy wants to live in America, a country he has never seen, but where he hopes he will feel comfortable since English is his primary language. He feels like an outsider when he is with native Italians since he also does not share their culture. The woman's Uncle George wants his niece and her son to come live in the Midwest town where the niece spent her unhappy childhood.

"The Bella Lingua" is story #26 in the collection "The Stories of John Cheever."