A Domestic Animal

By Francis King

Book Overview

A witty, heartbreaking tale of unrequited love by "one of the finest and most remarkable English novelists of our time." (The Scotsman)

Antonio Valli, a gifted Italian philosopher in his thirties, has left his wife and children behind in Florence for a one-year research fellowship at a provincial English university. Handsome and charming, Antonio is irresistible to men and women both--and he knows it. One who falls under his spell is Dick Thompson, a successful middle-aged novelist from whom Antonio rents a room. For the first time in years, Dick finds himself desperately, passionately in love, but the games the manipulative Italian plays with him throw the older man's life into chaos.

Published only three years after the decriminalization of homosexuality in the UK, A Domestic Animal is Francis King's most intimate and daringly autobiographical novel: a "wry, anguished study . . . of love and jealousy that] is hard to forget" (Robert Baldick, The Daily Telegraph).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1961341700
• ISBN13: 9781961341708
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: McNally Editions
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.0" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Unrequited love for a charming Italian

Dick Thompson is a successful middle-aged novelist living in a seaside university town, socially he is has many women friends, but he is in fact gay. Then through one of his female friends, Penny, he acquires a lodger, Antonio, Italian, a handsome and charming young philosopher and one time professional footballer who is visiting England to work at the university for research. He has left his wife and two children at home in Florence. Despite an outward appearance of strength and confidence, he is thoroughly undomesticated, certainly not "a domestic animal", he is untidy and dependant on others for physical care and emotional support. Dick is more than willing to provide for Antonio's needs. Inevitable Dick falls in love with the charismatic Antonio, but the strongly heterosexual Antonio is unable to reciprocate the feeling, yet nonetheless regards Dick as good friend. Dick relates the events of the year that Antonio stayed; his troubled and anxious feelings, the knowledge of the futility but inevitability of those feelings, feelings that may be so familiar to anyone who has been in a similar plight, with intelligence, insight, understanding, and occasional humour. This is a very perceptive and interesting story that has more than a ring of truth about it.