From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins
and The Cold Millions comes a stunning collection about those moments
when everything changes--for the better, for the worse, for the
outrageous--as a diverse cast of characters bounces from Italy to Idaho,
questioning their roles in life and finding inspiration in the
unlikeliest places.
We all live like we're famous now, curating our social media presences,
performing our identities, withholding those parts of ourselves we don't
want others to see. In this riveting collection of stories from
acclaimed author Jess Walter, a teenage girl tries to live up to the
image of her beautiful, missing mother. An elderly couple confronts the
fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation. A son must
repeatedly come out to his senile father while looking for a place to
care for the old man. A famous actor in recovery has a one-night stand
with the world's most surprising film critic. And in the romantic title
story, a shy twenty-one-year-old studying Latin in Rome during "the year
of my reinvention" finds himself face-to-face with the Italian actress
of his adolescent dreams.
Funny, poignant, and redemptive, this collection of short fiction offers
a dazzling range of voices, backdrops, and situations. With his
signature wit and bighearted approach to the darkest parts of humanity,
Walter tackles the modern condition with a timeless touch, once again
"solidifying his place in the contemporary canon as one of our most
gifted builders of fictional worlds" (Esquire).
