LAST SUMMER IN THE CITY by Gianfranco Calligarich; trans. by Howard Curtis

“A portrait of a young man adrift in a world where meaning has been swept away.”

last summer in the city

LAST SUMMER IN THE CITY

Calligarich, Gianfranco Trans. by Curtis, Howard Farrar, Straus and Giroux (192 pp.) $25.00 | Aug. 10, 2021 978-0-374-60015-0

When nothing means anything, what do you grab onto to save yourself? Drifting aimlessly in a sea of alcohol, coffee, women, and cigarettes, Milanese transplant Leo Gazzara floats through life in Rome, buoyed by his collection of secondhand classic books and a loose network of friends (some similarly disaffected, some seeming to have goals or, at least, cash). Leo’s attempts to create a more structured life—usually involving less alcohol and more employment—occur in waves and begin to take on more urgency when he encounters the troubled but alluring Arianna at a party at the home of more successful (and more settled) friends. Leo and a coasting soul mate, Graziano, mull over the causes of their estrangement from routine life and attempt a concerted effort to rescue themselves from slipping away entirely into adolce vita punctuated by drives to the sea or revivifying showers. Leo’s own efforts to recognize and connect with a meaningful existence rely in no small part on what may be the enduring love of his life: books. Allusions to Proust, James Fenimore Cooper, and other masters echo throughout Calligarich’s short but dense novel. Andre Aciman’s epic foreword to this first American edition provides biographical and bibliographic context for Calligarich’s novel, which was widely rejected before finally being published to acclaim in Italy in 1973 and, though falling in and out of print, developed a cultlike following over the years. The account of a lost generation in Rome in the early 1970s (possibly the children of the children of Hemingway’s lost generation) carries the weight of both family history and generational saga.

A portrait of a young man adrift in a world where meaning has been swept away.

VORTEX

Coulter, Catherine Morrow/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $28.99 | Aug. 10, 2021 978-0-06-300408-5

The FBI and the CIA tangle as a cold case heats up. Manhattan-based reporter Mia Briscoe can never forget her best friend, Serena Winters, who vanished from a fraternity rave seven years earlier. Even though Serena’s boyfriend’s father was an FBI agent, no trace of her was ever found, and Mia continues to think she was raped and murdered by someone at the party. When she’s given the job of covering the mayoral campaign of Alexander Talbot Harrington, a wealthy Bostonian with an equally ambitious fiancee, Mia never suspects that the job will be connected to Serena’s disappearance. In Washington, FBI Agent Savich takes on the case of CIA agent Olivia Hildebrandt, recently released from the hospital after a mission gone wrong, who killed one of the two men trying to kidnap or kill her. Olivia’s teammate and lover, Mike Kingman, escaped Iran with a flash drive and is in hiding. Both of them are certain that they were betrayed by someone inside the agency. Fighting off attempts by the CIA to keep the case to itself, Savich moves Olivia to a safe house. Savich’s wife, the talented FBI agent Sherlock, is sent to New York to help with a tricky case and becomes involved in Mia’s quest, which has blossomed after a friend sends old pictures taken at the fraternity party that lead to a shocking and dangerous discovery.

Coulter’s patented two-case structure serves her well despite the absence of any heightened sense of danger.

DANGER AT THE COVE

Dennison, Hannah Minotaur (304 pp.) $25.99 | Aug. 17, 2021 978-1-2501-9450-3

Adventure blooms off the Cornwall coast for a pair of middle-aged sisters. Evie Mead and Margot Chandler have hit the daily double of cozy tropes. Evie’s longtime husband dies, leaving her nothing but debt, around the same time her sister Margot’s no-good spouse leaves her for a younger squeeze. Instead of repairing to some charming country village, however, the two make their way to Tregarrick Rock in the Isles of Scilly, a remote and thinly populated region with tenuous ties to Britain. There they take out a long-term lease on the Tregarrick estate from absentee landlord Cador Ferris, hoping to make the sprawling property into a tourist destination. The two have vastly different ideas about the clientele they might attract: Evie meticulously restores each suite in period furnishings while Margot plans to install a helipad. But the two are inching their way toward their grand opening when a combination of human weakness and nature’s wrath throws a wrench in their plans. Softhearted Margot agrees to allow a recently widowed old friend from California to stay for a few days in their not-quite-completed accommodations ahead of an epic storm that, along with the vernal equinox and historic low tides of the syzygy, will lay bare large parts of the sea bed. The hotel staff plans an expedition to explore the wreck of the Isadora, normally inaccessible. But the disappearance of handyman Oliver Martin complicates things. Soon the wild beauty of the island must be tamed to host a police investigation as murder and deceit invade Tregarrick Rock.

Its novel setting pushes this cozy to offer unexpected pleasures.