{"product_id":"the-apprentice-lover-a-novel-9780066210711","title":"The Apprentice Lover: A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003eA poet and biographer  Jay Parini is also a novelist whose fiction has been acclaimed as \"dazzli\/ng \" (Los Angeles Times) \"achingly beautiful \" (Washington Post) and \"a subtle masterpiece\" (John Bayley in the Times Literary Supplement). In his new novel  The Apprentice Lover  Parini evokes the gorgeous Mediterranean island of Capri during the summer of 1970 as the setting for a sensuous  deeply affecting story of a young Americans coming into his own and reconciling himself with his past. When Alex Massolinis brother is killed in Vietnam  he drops out of Columbia University and leaves his conservative family behind for Capri to become secretary to Rupert Grant  a famous British novelist and poet  who dominates the island like a latter-day Prospero. Alex soon finds himself ensnared in a web of love affairs  friendships  and rivalries within the eccentric community that inhabits the idyllic beauty of the isolated Italian island. Among that group are the selfish  cunning  and brilliant Rupert Grant; his wife Vera  a charming and sophisticated social manipulator; the elusive Holly and the mysterious Marisa  who act as Grants research assistants; the young philosophy student from the Sorbonne  Patrice LaRue; and Father Aurelio  who is desperate for parishioners. The Apprentice Lover traces a young Americans enchantment and disenchantment-with his American past  with his new European mentor  and with the various characters on an island famous for its characters. As Alex stumbles upon intrigues and secrets  he tries to balance what others demand of him with his own nascent desires. His apprenticeship in love  literature  and life unfolds with a combination of Mediterranean clarity  wry humor  wit  and emotional power that only a master of fiction could orchestrate.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45815884415029,"sku":"ByrdShop_0066210712","price":27.08,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780066210711.jpg?v=1785175585","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-apprentice-lover-a-novel-9780066210711","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}