Kirjahaku

The new novel from an acclaimed short story writer – a brilliantly observed portrait of a man teetering on the edge of abandoning his marriage for a homosexual affair As a husband, Luca Carcera hides his emotions behind the safety of routine domesticity. With his spice jars and cookbooks stacked perfectly in the kitchen, he feels in some measure of control. He loves his wife, but is struggling to come to terms with the secret desires which lie beneath his role as a steady, suburban, middle-class husband. His parents, Lou and Dorothy, spent 14 years together before Lou abandoned his wife to set up home with a male friend and, perhaps unsurprisingly, young Luca grows up confused, not only about his own sexuality, but about the whole institution of marriage. Luca may well love his wife, but what guarantee has he that he will not walk out on her 14 years into their marriage, having finally woken up to his latent homosexuality? Acclaimed for his elegant stories on the flawed but necessary social bond that is marriage, Giardina once again proves himself an acutely sensitive writer – a brilliant observer of middle-class dreams, aspirations and compromises.

What if the perfect life isn't enough?Back in 1970s Winship, Massachusetts, Billy Mogavero was everything his friends wanted to be - tough, sexy, graceful, a leader of young men. After a reunion twenty years later, Timmy O'Kane watches his old best friend charm his way into career success and an ideal marriage, and begins to question his own cosy, sensible life.But then Billy and his pregnant wife are victims of a drive-by shooting, and Timmy is ensnared in a series of terrifying but seductive events that threatens to bring his life tumbling down around him...

The author of Norumbega Park returns with a bravura novel about the secrets artists keep--from the rest of the world, and from themselves. Even though Miranda Rando, a forty-year-old writer living in Brooklyn, is making breakthroughs in her biography of a powerful woman artist, she can't escape the all-commanding presence of her father, Henry. And now that he has written a slightly embarrassing and shockingly successful self-help book, the seventy-year-old playwright is everywhere. Henry's sudden rise to prominence--along with his need to grapple more deeply with his own religious life-- leads him to join a mission to Haiti. There, he meets a young man eager to come to America. But his motivation to help becomes complicated by his disturbing attraction to the boy. It also comes to threaten his relationships with his daughter and his wife, Lily, a successful actress. Miranda and Henry play out their separate dramas until the lives of the father and daughter become hopelessly intertwined. Miranda's drive to understand the mysterious artist she's profiling becomes a journey into the past, into the lost New York of the 1970s, a time whose social and political fervency will always be wrapped up with her own childhood. That journey, existing alongside Henry's need to test the boundaries of their relationship, leads her to a new awareness of how much artists will always withhold from their children, and from the world. Anthony Giardina's Remember This moves through the cutthroat contemporary art world, the New York theater scene, and post-earthquake Haiti to ask questions about artistic legacies, and about the root of family relationships. What secrets are necessary for us to keep? How much can we ask of each other? And what truths will remain forever hidden?

In 1979, Washington D.C. was a place where people actually talked to each other...where adversaries fought it out on the Senate floor and then smoothed it out over drinks and hors d'oeuvres. But it was all about to change. In this play spanning 30 years and six presidential administrations, Hester Ferris throws Georgetown dinner parties that can change the course of Washington's politics. But when her beloved son suddenly turns up with an ambitious Reaganite girlfriend and a shocking new conse

With this collection of stories, Anthony Giardina takes his place among the finest writers of short fiction in America. The Country of Marriage is a window into the lives of men as they confront the darkness at the heart of domestic existence. Giardina looks at our relationships with an eye capable of clinical precision but never devoid of compassion, and gives voice to the emotions that lie unexplored and unexpressed beneath their seemingly placid surface. In "Days with Cecilia," a highly articulate shop teacher reveals by attrition the sexual secret of his marriage. In "The Lake," a young fireman confronts his complicity in the murder of his best friend's wife. And in "The Films of Richard Egan," the aborted career of an almost-was film star finds its echo in a suburban boy's life. These are emotional landscapes at once familiar and unsettling, with characters who are instantly recognizable but endlessly surprising. Brilliantly observed and masterfully told, The Country of Marriage is an unforgettable montage of lives of dwindling promise, of stubborn hope, of emotional atrophy, and of the courage to take root in the indifferent soil of modern existence. "Anthony Giardina has an exquisite sense of the nuances of gesture and voice, the clamor of things unsaid."--The New York Times Book Review

Richie Palumbo, the most ordinary of men, gets lost one night in 1969 while driving with his family. He finds himself in Norumbega a gorgeous, hidden town on the far edges of Boston's western suburbs. He sees a venerable old house and, without quite knowing why, decides that he must have it. Richie's wild dream sets his family on a forty-year odyssey in which they confront class and parental dreams, sex and spirituality, and the way hopes conflict with reality. Anthony Giardina's "Norumbega Park" is a brilliant, sensuous drama of suburban angst a novel that mines the depths of desire and its abiding consequences."

The author of Norumbega Park returns with a bravura novel about the secrets artists keep--from the rest of the world, and from themselves. Miranda Rando, a forty-year-old writer living in Brooklyn, is making major breakthroughs in her biography of a powerful female artist, yet she can't escape the commanding influence of her father, Henry. And now that he has written a slightly embarrassing and shockingly successful self-help book, the seventy-year-old playwright is everywhere. Henry's need to grapple more deeply with his own religious life leads him to join a church mission to Haiti. There, he meets a young man eager to come to America. But Henry's motivation to help becomes complicated by a disturbing attraction to the boy, which also threatens his relationships with his daughter, Miranda, and his wife, Lily, a longtime stage actress. Miranda's drive to understand the mysterious painter she's profiling occasions an imaginative return to her childhood in the ferment of 1970s New York. Over the course of her research she gains a new awareness of how much artists will always withhold from their children, and from the world. Anthony Giardina, the author of Norumbega Park, returns with a bravura novel that moves through the contemporary art world, the internecine squabbles of theater on and off Broadway, and the politics of post-earthquake Haiti to ask questions about artistic legacies and about the roots of family ties. What secrets are necessary for us to keep? How much can we ask of one another? And what truths remain hidden even from ourselves?