Francesco Pacifico, trans. from the Italian by Stephen Twilley. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26 (256p) ISBN 978-0-374-27044-5
In this strained comic novel, Pietro Rosini, out of shape and unhappily married, tries to emulate the pope and lead a life of purity. Employed as an editor at a Catholic publishing house, he toils on a nonfiction book, The Jewish Pope, about the...
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Francesco Pacifico. Melville House (PRH, dist.), $25.99 (352p) ISBN 978-1-61219-593-3
Pacifico’s (The Story of My Purity) ultimately tiresome examination of cultural rot calls to mind La Dolce Vita reworked by Bret Easton Ellis. The novel centers on a group of Italians, most of whom are parentally subsidized, pursuing their...
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Francesco Pacifico, trans. from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $17 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-0-374-29272-0
A wealthy lapsed poet approaching 40 dissects his relationships with women while trying to write a novel in Pacifico’s drifting send-up of the toxic literary man archetype (after Class). Marcello commutes from Rome to Milan for a job as an editor,...
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