The Story of My Purity
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
The Story of My Purity by Francesco Pacifico is an unmissable novel from an exciting young voice in European fiction.
Thirty years old and already trapped in a sexless marriage, Piero Rosini has decided to dedicate his life to Jesus. Novels and music were filling his head with b******t; his bourgeois life in a fancy neighborhood had taken him far away from spiritual purity and the Lord's truth. So he's moved to an unfinished housing development on the outskirts of Rome and thrown himself into his work at an ultraconservative Catholic publishing house.
Yet still Piero is suffocating. He can't get his beautiful sister-in-law out of his head. Temptations (both physical and intellectual) are breaking down his religious resolve. He decides to flee to Paris, which turns out not to be the best way of guarding his purity.
Pacifico's exuberant novel brings us Europe old and new and the inner workings of a conflicted but always compelling mind. This is fiction with great humour, intelligence, and vision, from a young writer at the beginning of a tremendous career.
Francesco Pacifico has written for a number of Italian publications, as well as for Rolling Stone and GQ, and has translated into Italian the works of Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Dave Eggers, Will Eisner, and more. He lives in Rome.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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 late Pope John Paul II. There are temptations all around him, including his beautiful, virginal sister-in-law, Ada, and the free-spirited Lavinia. After getting himself fired, Pietro moves from Rome to Paris, sans wife, where he gets a job with another Catholic publisher. But even here Pietro finds temptation, now in the form of Clelia, a vibrant, young New York Jew. Keeping things platonic, he moves into the Pigalle apartment she lives in that is owned by her uncle. When The Jewish Pope is published, Pietro worries that it will affect his relationships with Clelia and her uncle. Ada's unexpected arrival precipitates a final, farcical chain of events. The story would be funnier and more entertaining if Piero weren't such a wet blanket and actually did something beyond pining and feeling guilty. A more notable aspect of the book is the way that Piero views every situation through the scrim of American pop culture.