| Vendor | |
|---|---|
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Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus |
| Original language | |
| English | |
| Weblink | |
| http://www.jessiechaffee.com | |
FLORENCE IN ECSTASY
A visceral, vivid debut inspired by the novels of Jean Rhys, Elena Ferrante, and Catherine Lacey, that follows a troubled woman's attempt to find herself in an unstable world.
Hannah arrives in Florence from Boston, knowing no one and speaking little Italian. But she is isolated in a more profound way, estranged from her own identity after a bout of starvation that left her life and body in ruins. She is determined to recover in Florence, a city saturated with beauty, vitality, and foodas well as a dangerous history of sainthood for women who starved themselves for God.
Hannah joins a local rowing club, where Francesca, a welcoming but predatory Milanese, and Luca, a seemingly steady Florentine with whom she becomes involved, draw her into Florence's vibrant present but Hannah is also rapt by the city's past. Both sides pull Hannah in: challenging her, defeating her, lifting her up. And when a figure from her past life in Boston reappears, threatening the delicate balance of her present, Hannah's feverish personal excavation becomes caught up with the long history of women's contention with body and spirit, desire and death.
Jessie Chaffee was awarded a 2014-2015 Fulbright Grant in Creative Writing to Italy and has been a Writer-in-Residence at Florence University of the Arts. Her fiction and nonfiction has been published in The Rumpus, Bluestem, Global City Review, Big Bridge, and The Sigh Press, among others. She is an editor of Words Without Borders and lives in New York City.
(A Sarah Burnes book for The Gernert Company)
Hannah arrives in Florence from Boston, knowing no one and speaking little Italian. But she is isolated in a more profound way, estranged from her own identity after a bout of starvation that left her life and body in ruins. She is determined to recover in Florence, a city saturated with beauty, vitality, and foodas well as a dangerous history of sainthood for women who starved themselves for God.
Hannah joins a local rowing club, where Francesca, a welcoming but predatory Milanese, and Luca, a seemingly steady Florentine with whom she becomes involved, draw her into Florence's vibrant present but Hannah is also rapt by the city's past. Both sides pull Hannah in: challenging her, defeating her, lifting her up. And when a figure from her past life in Boston reappears, threatening the delicate balance of her present, Hannah's feverish personal excavation becomes caught up with the long history of women's contention with body and spirit, desire and death.
Jessie Chaffee was awarded a 2014-2015 Fulbright Grant in Creative Writing to Italy and has been a Writer-in-Residence at Florence University of the Arts. Her fiction and nonfiction has been published in The Rumpus, Bluestem, Global City Review, Big Bridge, and The Sigh Press, among others. She is an editor of Words Without Borders and lives in New York City.
(A Sarah Burnes book for The Gernert Company)
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Published 2017-05-01 by The Unnamed Press |