Synopsis

Francesco Colloneve, a professional embalmer, has learned that there is no escape from loss, and so it's worth practicing all those skills that help one survive abandonment. When his father falls ill, his worm-eaten memory provides an opportunity to simultaneously recall the shortcomings and guilt that Francesco still bears the scars of. But it is upon the death of his father, to whom he was forced to move, that Colloneve—an expert in abandonment by nature as well as by profession—must use all his strategies to transform the pain of grief into a spell of eternity. For if, as Elizabeth Bishop wrote, "the art of losing is not difficult to learn," the art of surviving what's lost is more complicated. In this, his debut novel, with precise and cutting language—evoking the tools of his protagonist—Di Fronzo tells us how to ensure that what would otherwise disappear immediately remains ours forever.