Bright Monday

"A vivid, moving new novel from two-time PEN/Faulkner finalist David Leavitt that traces a romantic entanglement begun during the AIDs pandemic and rekindled during COVID. Our narrator, Adam, is translating into English his Italian friend Valeria's new hit novel-a surprise bestseller she published under a pseudonym after a long career as a novelist. Two days before he is scheduled to return home from Milan, he runs into Francesco, an architect with whom he had a volatile affair thirty-two years before and whom he has not seen since. When Francesco invites Adam to an Easter lunch with his family, Adam finds himself drawn back into the affair, which took place in New York City at the height of the AIDS pandemic. Alighting alternately on two historical moments, two cities, and two very different pandemics, Bright Monday explores the ripple effects of a youthful entanglement as complex and far-reaching as it is callow. It's the rare novel that faces regrets and questions of what might have been with maturity and collective wisdom, as timely as it is timeless"--