The Florentine Papers

Thom Palmer's richly imagined first novel offers a hilarious yet bittersweet examination of food, art, and love. The unnamed narrator of this brilliantly conceived farce, a struggling poet in San Francisco, finds that his life takes a dramatic turn when he meets and falls hopelessly in love with enigmatic young Maria Perpetua, a brainy and seductive food writer composing an encyclopedic masterpiece on spinach. Their ill-fated romance, and the consequences of her sudden rise to cult fame, form the core of a mock memoir related in a highly original fictional voice. Funny, strange, and poignant, The Florentine Papers is a sumptuous feast of food and language, a novel The Washington Post called "a fascinating tale with two marvelously memorable characters."