The Florentine Papers

By Thom Palmer

Book Overview

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."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1966218001
• ISBN13: 9781966218005
• Release Date: February 2025
• Publisher: Tivoli Books
• Length: 186 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.3" x 8.0"

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.