Overview

PORTOFINO, ITALY. JULY 1953 At a glittering party thrown by Truman Capote, literary sensation Tennessee Williams and his longtime lover Frank Merlo meet the enigmatic Anja Blomgren, an aspiring Swedish actress. Their encounter will alter the course of their lives forever. Spanning half a century and featuring a dazzling cast of characters - from Anna Magnani cooking pasta amatriciana in a sun-kissed kitchen in Rome, to Ludovico Visconti barking orders on his latest film set - LEADING MEN is a heart-breaking novel about life in the shadows of greatness, and a moving re-telling of one of the great literary love stories of the twentieth-century. 'I read LEADING MEN in one rapt afternoon, and spent hours afterwards just stunned from having been immersed in such a tender, psychologically devastating, and gorgeously precise novel' Lauren Groff, author of FATES AND FURIES 'An alert, sweeping novel. To hold it in your hands is like holding a front-row opera ticket' Dwight Garner, New York Times 'This is a novel of rare insight and beauty, and Castellani is a writer of brilliant gifts' Garth Greenwell, author of WHAT BELONGS TO YOU

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9781474613545

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Reviews

Blazing... Casts a spell right from the start. - Dwight Garner, New York Times Seductive, steamy... Castellani's quiet portrayal of Merlo has a deep, aching appeal and his prose has a beguiling lilt and colour. - Boston Globe Dazzling... [Castellani writes] with an evocative precision that historical fiction often merely aspires to. - Entertainment Weekly A novel of rare insight and beauty, and Castellani is a writer of brilliant gifts. - Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

Leading Men stirs up the kind of beautiful trouble we admire in the work of Tennessee Williams. A clever, allusive, multi-layered novel filled with wit, insight, and heart. I loved it. * Justin Torres, author of We The Animals * Leading Men is a daredevil of a novel, like the prettiest boy in the gay bar doing a backflip off a stool and not spilling his drink. Castellani has set his eye on that ineffable profane that is the other face of the divine, in a novel that unites my obsessions with Tennessee Williams, Luchino Visconti, Truman Capote, film, cruising, and Italy, and wraps it up in a love story, but a story of old love--love of a kind we almost never see written. * Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night * With echoes of Tender is the Night and The Sun Also Rises, Leading Men tells the extraordinary love story of Tennessee Williams and Frank Merlo. Castellani elegantly weaves together Merlo's final days with memories of a dramatic (and delicious) Italian summer in 1953 that changes his world forever. Throw in an aging Swedish actress, Truman Capote, Italian cinema and the staging (and script!) of a lost Williams play and you have all the ingredients for a literary page-turner. Leading Men is about fame and love and forgiveness, about the ravages of time, and how we try to lay claim to the future, while the present slips through our fingers. * Hannah Tinti, author of The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley * With extraordinary artistry and grace, Christopher Castellani interweaves history and invention to show us both the depths great artists are driven to and the love that draws them back. I know of few books that give such a moving account of the indispensable value of genius and its intolerable human cost. This is a novel of rare insight and beauty, and Castellani is a writer of brilliant gifts. * Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You * I read Christopher Castellani's Leading Men in one quiet, sunny, rapt afternoon, and spent hours afterwards just stunned from having been immersed in such a tender, psychologically devastating, and gorgeously precise novel. An extraordinary book. * Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies and Florida * Spectacular... Castellani's novel hits the trifecta of being moving, beautifully written, and a bona fide page-turner. This is a wonderful examination of artists and the people who love them and change their work in large and imperceptible ways. * Publishers Weekly, Starred Review * 'Audacious...[Castellani's] novel not only exults in the historical synchronicities and proximities he has discovered but catches the reader up in its rapture. * New York Times Book Review * Dazzling... [Castellani writes] with an evocative precision that historical fiction often merely aspires to. * Entertainment Weekly * Touching... Castellani knows his people... and he knows this world. * Washington Post * A seductive, steamy novel of Tennessee Williams and his lover... Castellani's quiet portrayal of Merlo has a deep, aching appeal... [His] prose has a beguiling lilt and color, whether he's evoking his characters' evasive or erratic emotions, or conjuring the far-flung locales where these globe-hoppers touch down. * Boston Globe * Blazing... Casts a spell right from the start... Vividly reimagines the relationship between Williams and Frank Merlo, and offers intricate thoughts about the nature of fidelity, the artistic impulse, and estrangement . . . [Castellani's] scenes glitter . . . This book is a kind of poem in praise of pleasure. Its author knows a great deal about life; better, he knows how to express what he knows. But this is an alert, serious, sweeping novel. To hold it in your hands is like holding, to crib a line from Castellani, a front-row opera ticket. * Dwight Garner, New York Times (Book of the Times) *

Blazing... Casts a spell right from the start. - Dwight Garner, New York Times Seductive, steamy... Castellani's quiet portrayal of Merlo has a deep, aching appeal and his prose has a beguiling lilt and colour. - Boston Globe With echoes of Tender is the Night and The Sun Also Rises, Leading Men weaves together Frank Merlo's final days with memories of a dramatic (and delicious) Italian summer in 1953 that changes his world forever. Throw in an ageing Swedish actress, Truman Capote, Italian cinema and the staging (and script!) of a lost Williams play and you have all the ingredients for a literary page-turner. - Hannah Tinti, author of The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley

Author Information

The son of Italian immigrants and a native of Wilmington, Delaware, CHRISTOPHER CASTELLANI now lives in Boston, where he works as artistic director of Grub Street, one of the country's leading independent creative writing centers. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for researching and writing LEADING MEN.

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