A Man of No Moon

by Jenny McPhee

Book Overview

It's 1948, and postwar Rome is giddy and chaotic. Poet Dante Sabato is attending yet another film industry soir e at Tullio Merlini's apartment off the Via del Corso. Disaffected and deeply self-absorbed, Dante finds Tullio's glamorous evenings tedious but welcomed any distraction. This raining evening, the distraction is double: sisters Gladys and Prudence Godfrey, both beautiful, sharp-witted, and remarkably compelling American actresses who have...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1582433755
• ISBN13: 9781582433752
• Release Date: August 2007
• Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
• Length: 271 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.7" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

"I would rather end my life right now"

This absolute gem of a novel centers around the romantic and sexual threesome of two gorgeous American ex-pats and a naughty minded Italian poet and translator of English novels who gravitates between his fears, his thoughts of suicide, and his fears of artistic inaction. A lover of art, literature, movies, and sex, which he carries with him like a badge of honor, Dante Sabato, tries to live his life with the best of intentions even when he's suddenly hijacked by two beautiful and glamorous American actresses Gladys and Prudence Godfrey, ostensibly in Italy to make movies but to also escape the perpetual sand and grit of Los Angeles. Beginning in 1948, author Jenny McPhee beautifully captures her three characters' hopes and dreams, lusts and desires as the years of the War remain most prominent in their lives. Certainly, Dante and Gladys are far from conservative. Free-wheeling and sexually adventurous, both are products of their respective societies, and both are decidedly artistic and both very bohemian. It is only the delicate Prudence who seems the more conformist. Yet it is Prudence whom Dante ultimately sets his sights on, becoming ever more obsessed with the actress's unique glow. There is certainly something familiar about Prudence, her scent "elusive and changeable" that gives Dante the sensation that he had known her all his life. Perhaps it is this feeling that makes him fall for her. But the prospect of true love is too much for Italy's "most famous living poet" with his lack of conviction intuiting his suicide habit right from the start. In the first blush of lust it is Gladys who physically desires Dante. Eager and quick-witted, with a fine nose for the erotic, Dante becomes easily distracted by Gladys's unquenchable desire: "Don't get me wrong, but you suit me, of all the men I've known you seem the least complicated." A veritable travelogue of glamorous Italy, this novel follows Dante's attractions to both women as the narrative moves from Rome to Venice and Capri to Lisbon, and then to Florence and Dante's home of Castiglioncello on the coast where the sun sits low on the horizon casting an unnatural light over the opal sea. In its genuine glow it is Gladys's complexion that becomes as electric as her mood, while Dante ultimately hopes to be saved by the ever-present Prudence. As the images of these two women become layered in beauty and poetry, Mcphee intersperses real characters (like the actress Anna Magnani) with her fictional creations such as the beautiful and charming Tullio who constantly surprises Dante with his intelligence and who instills in Dante the endless dreams of their voyage to America. Grappling with a sense of moral failure, Dante remains haunted by the violent pre-war years of fascism, his life as anti-Fascist activist and an assassin, and also his time in prison. It's not surprising then that his life is full of hesitations and a sense of wanting to run away. Filled with an uneasy sorrow for what th

HOT

Not since I was a teenager picking through my mother's books have I actually dog-eared pages to mark the sex scenes in order to pass along to friends! This book is smoking-hot, AND it has a great plot to boot. I've read McPhee's other books and really liked them, but this one just blew me away. Read this book at bedtime with your mate, it will make you both very "happy."