‘An Italian novel of imperfect love and urgent grief’
NEW YORK TIMES
‘I want everyone to read it; I want to press it into people’s hands. Surely one of the best novels I’ve ever read’
ANDREW SEAN GREER, author of Less
‘A novel of dignified beauty’
OBSERVER
‘A stunning novel . . . prepare to be deeply moved’
JACK PARLETT, author of Fire Island
‘A discreet, lyrical meditation on the nature of male love’
EDMUND WHITE
Thomas, a young German musician, is dying. His older boyfriend, a renowned Italian writer named Leo, finds it impossible to watch the slow and inevitable demise of his lover; he condemns himself to moving cities every few weeks instead, in the hope of finding a semblance of peace.
He travels through Europe where past and present overlap, years merge and faces emerge – and where reminders of the life he and Thomas shared are on every corner. Leo’s memories become clearer with every road he takes, much as he wishes he could simply forget. Wanting to preserve the passion of their relationship, Leo had forced Thomas to live separately: in separate rooms, separate towns, with separate lives. But now, face to face with true solitude, Leo must finally reckon with the impossible striving of memory to recreate life and, ultimately, cross an ocean to find the strength to go on.
André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name meets Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: Separate Rooms is a singular and unforgettable meditation on almost-ideal love, told in three musical movements, by a fiery and unforgettable literary talent.
NEW YORK TIMES
‘I want everyone to read it; I want to press it into people’s hands. Surely one of the best novels I’ve ever read’
ANDREW SEAN GREER, author of Less
‘A novel of dignified beauty’
OBSERVER
‘A stunning novel . . . prepare to be deeply moved’
JACK PARLETT, author of Fire Island
‘A discreet, lyrical meditation on the nature of male love’
EDMUND WHITE
Thomas, a young German musician, is dying. His older boyfriend, a renowned Italian writer named Leo, finds it impossible to watch the slow and inevitable demise of his lover; he condemns himself to moving cities every few weeks instead, in the hope of finding a semblance of peace.
He travels through Europe where past and present overlap, years merge and faces emerge – and where reminders of the life he and Thomas shared are on every corner. Leo’s memories become clearer with every road he takes, much as he wishes he could simply forget. Wanting to preserve the passion of their relationship, Leo had forced Thomas to live separately: in separate rooms, separate towns, with separate lives. But now, face to face with true solitude, Leo must finally reckon with the impossible striving of memory to recreate life and, ultimately, cross an ocean to find the strength to go on.
André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name meets Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: Separate Rooms is a singular and unforgettable meditation on almost-ideal love, told in three musical movements, by a fiery and unforgettable literary talent.
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Reviews
A discreet, lyrical meditation on the nature of male love
A novel of dignified beauty
Tondelli's was a meticulous talent, precise and particular, his writing full of nicely observed detail and an almost microscopic view of everyday things and feelings
A masterly piece of writing, rich with insight and detail, and a curiously moving optimism
An Italian novel of imperfect love and urgent grief
Separate Rooms is a classic in Italy: a story of love and youth and pain that will have you clutching at your heart. I want everyone to read it; I want to press it into people's hands. Surely one of the best novels I've ever read
Read the classic novel of love and memory . . . before it becomes a Luca Guadagnino film
Separate Rooms is a stunning novel. Pier Vittorio Tondelli paints a picture of queer love at once woozy, intimate and frayed at the edges by grief and history. He poses essential questions about what it means to build a life, and what the act of writing demands of us. If you ever need reminding why we run towards connection, even in the face of risk and loss, read this book, and prepare to be deeply moved
A major work of queer literature. Don't be deceived by the title. Separate Rooms is uncompromisingly about loss: the loss of self that a gay man, brought up to a solitary sense of identity by a world that doesn't recognise queer love, feels on falling in love; and then, shatteringly, the deranging effects of bereavement. Miraculously it does end with a note of hope, but Tondelli (who was himself to die of an AIDS-related illness in 1991) is not afraid to show the absurdity of grief: "The fact is, Leo, he's dead. And you're not. That's why he's not the right man for you." Bleak and harrowingly funny and eventually gloriously redemptive