First published 2001
David proposes to Hella, a young American woman in 1950s Paris. The expatriate community swirls around them with secrets and violence lurking beneath polished surfaces. While Hella travels to Spain to consider his proposal, David meets Giovanni, an Italian bartender whose charm pulls him into an affair that challenges everything he believes about himself. David moves into Giovanni's small room, but the intimacy terrifies him. He wants the conventional life he always imagined, yet Giovanni awakens desires he cannot deny. As David wavers between his two lovers, his choices become increasingly desperate. The city's hidden dangers close in around Giovanni while David struggles with impulses that threaten to destroy his carefully constructed identity. Baldwin crafts a story where love and self-deception collide in a narrative that reveals the cost of denying one's true nature.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, adult-fiction, gay-fiction
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, forbidden-love, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Paris, Spain
Period: 1950s
159 pages · Paperback · Penguin
Content warnings: explicit-sexual-content