The Prince’s Boy

Bailey (At the Jerusalem) does more with less in this short, but moving, coming-of-age novel. Narrator Dinu Grigorescu’s mature perspective on events 40 years after they take place serve as the basis for a “memoir of a life half-lived.” Dinu, a 19-year-old aspiring writer, travels to France from his native Bucharest in 1927; an early reference to his being “green in the ways of flesh and the complexities of human intercourse” telegraphs that this will be an important part of his education. Sure enough, only three weeks after his arrival in Paris, he crosses paths with “the prince’s boy,” Razvan Popescu, who is in fact now an older man but was indeed adopted in his childhood by a prince. The remainder of the book follows the love affair between the two men and Razvan’s instruction to Dinu in the “ways of the world.” The basic elements of the story line, which extends into the 1930s and the beginning of WWII, are familiar—Grigorescu’s mother, for example, warns him that his sexual orientation is a pathway straight to hell. But the rich characters and the supple prose make it far more than the sum of its parts. Agent: David Miller, Rogers, Coleridge & White. (U.K.) (Oct.)