The Florentine Papers

By Thom Palmer

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 087905364X
• ISBN13: 9780879053642
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A little-known gem

It's tragic that this sly and wonderful romp is out of print and never even had a paperback. The Florentine Papers is a small gem about a doltish poet roughly used by a determined young woman named Maria who burns to write her magnum opus: a comprehensive treatise on spinach (thus, Palmer's title). A naked homage to Nabokov except leavened somehow (by brevity? sheer American-ness?), Palmer's prose is transparent enough to reveal the narrator as the classically pedantic fool the master would have loved--one who is no match for the object of his affections. Hilarious, accomplished, and most of all delicious. Get a copy however you can.