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Milo's Reckoning
Award-winning author Joseph Olshan's latest novel, Milo's Reckoning, follows a grieving New York PhD candidate through an investigation into the death of his mentor, leading him along a trail of dark clues that take him to Italy and beyond.
When Milo Rossi, a graduate student in Italian at New York University, is awakened one morning by a Westchester county policeman and told that his mentor apparently has hanged himself, he instinctively distrusts the coroner's verdict. After all, he'd just the night before spent the evening in Lenny D'Ambrosio's company, discussing literature in translation and the complicated life and death of Primo Levi and had not detected a trace of melancholy. Searching for clues that will explain Lenny's demise brings Milo in contact with an acquaintance of his brother Carlo, who died in a car accident four years earlier. The startling and unnerving details that he learns about his brother's death drive Milo to the farthest reaches of New York City and then to Italy. There, he gets ensnared in a channel of illegal pornography being made with undocumented actors who have been trafficked into the country and forced into the sex trade. Shattered by the harrowing truths that he learns abroad, he returns to America sorrowful and yet enlightened.
When Milo Rossi, a graduate student in Italian at New York University, is awakened one morning by a Westchester county policeman and told that his mentor apparently has hanged himself, he instinctively distrusts the coroner's verdict. After all, he'd just the night before spent the evening in Lenny D'Ambrosio's company, discussing literature in translation and the complicated life and death of Primo Levi and had not detected a trace of melancholy. Searching for clues that will explain Lenny's demise brings Milo in contact with an acquaintance of his brother Carlo, who died in a car accident four years earlier. The startling and unnerving details that he learns about his brother's death drive Milo to the farthest reaches of New York City and then to Italy. There, he gets ensnared in a channel of illegal pornography being made with undocumented actors who have been trafficked into the country and forced into the sex trade. Shattered by the harrowing truths that he learns abroad, he returns to America sorrowful and yet enlightened.
- GenresMystery
284 pages, Hardcover
Published June 10, 2025
2560 people want to read
About the author
Joseph Olshan
18 books79 followersJoseph Olshan is an award-winning American novelist. His first novel, Clara's Heart, won the Times/Jonathan Cape Young Writers' Competition and went on to be made into a feature film starring Whoopi Goldberg. He is the author of eight novels, the most recent of which, The Conversion, will be published in 2008.
In addition to his novels, he has written extensively for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, The Times (London), The Guardian (London),The Independent (London), The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, the New York Observer, Harpers Bazaar, People magazine and Entertainment Weekly. During the 1990's he was a regular contributor of book reviews to the Wall Street Journal. For six years was a professor of Creative Writing at New York University where he taught both graduate and undergraduate courses.
Joseph Olshan's other novels include Nightswimmer and Vanitas, as well as The Waterline, A Warmer Season, The Sound of Heaven and In Clara's Hands, a sequel to his acclaimed first novel, Clara's Heart.
Joseph Olshan is published in the U.S. by Saint Martin's Press and Berkley Books; and in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury publishing and Arcadia Books. His work has been translated into sixteen languages.
In addition to his novels, he has written extensively for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, The Times (London), The Guardian (London),The Independent (London), The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, the New York Observer, Harpers Bazaar, People magazine and Entertainment Weekly. During the 1990's he was a regular contributor of book reviews to the Wall Street Journal. For six years was a professor of Creative Writing at New York University where he taught both graduate and undergraduate courses.
Joseph Olshan's other novels include Nightswimmer and Vanitas, as well as The Waterline, A Warmer Season, The Sound of Heaven and In Clara's Hands, a sequel to his acclaimed first novel, Clara's Heart.
Joseph Olshan is published in the U.S. by Saint Martin's Press and Berkley Books; and in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury publishing and Arcadia Books. His work has been translated into sixteen languages.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 15, 2024
✰ 3 stars ✰
“The real truth is an awful truth, isn’t it?”
The alternative title to Milo's Reckoning is aptly so.. For while it very much, indeed, is a reckoning for Milo to come terms with his beloved Professor's death, as well as understand the motive behind it, it is also a heartfelt Love Song For Carlo, his older brother who died in a tragic accident a few years ago, and he and his mother, Rose Marie, were never able to quite receive the much-needed closure to his unexplainable car accident that stole their family member from their lives. 💔💔
It is the craftiness in which Milo's life is intertwined with how details unfolded regarding his enigmatic Lenny D'Ambrosio's death that inadvertently led him to clues concerning his own brother's accident that kept me intrigued. It becomes apparent that while he is grieving the sudden death of his professor, it was still the deep hurt and sense of loss of Carlo that he and his mother have not been able to neither forget - '... how awful it’s been for us not knowing...' 😔
From the Italian streets of New York and his classes at NYU, Milo becomes embroiled if not fascinated with the seedy underground dealings of the Italian sex trade, which sheds light on a side of both of them he was not aware of. It is in that case, his reckoning - '...you often see the most ordinary people taking these kinds of unfathomable and extraordinary risks.'. To come to terms with the honest realization of how much of their lives he had not been privy to that led to circumstances not in his control. There is an aching sadness and a sense of regret that permeates throughout Milo's thoughts and actions that keeps you compelled to continue. 🥺
“Let’s be honest: You have strong reasons for not wanting to believe he could have killed himself.”
“Of course I have strong reasons! He was my mentor! I modeled myself after him. If he killed him- self, it casts doubt on everything—everything I ever learned from him.”
It is commendable to note how straightforward the author is in highlighting the pornography dealings of a lucrative business, where they cater to a certain form and hiring a certain class of actors that have no other means to earn a living. It is painful and distraught - distasteful and unpleasant, but Milo has to know the truth - to understand. For a man so cultured and learned to be entertained by such - entertainment; or for his brother to even not be caught up in it, but to know those who deal with it - to just know why? And how? Being his trusted protégé, holding him in such high esteem, his love for Italian literature and the language, itself, it is a struggle deeply felt in his intent investigation into Lenny's past and life of what he was not privy to. 😟
Without prejudice - simply matter-of-fact, without justification, simply stating it as it was. No need to romanticize it or depict it in a fashion overly exaggerated to appeal to one's senses. No sense of denial or retribution, almost conciliatory and defensive of how the ones in charge keep emotions out of it; 'anyone watching these videos is watching fiction, not reality. It’s all staged; it’s just really edgy.' As horrifying as it is to believe such acts of depravity and shame exist, Milo does become more self-aware to how much he was not aware of. 😢 For as much as he has learned in Italian language and literature, he finds himself very much at a loss of what it means to be a person and value others' feelings and regard them for it. How it is not so much as exploitation, no matter how Milo views it as such, but simply a way for those without hope of future prospects to find means to love and survive.
“The measure of grief over someone you love is equal to the amount you loved them.”
In the end, Lenny's apparent suicide was the much-needed catalyst for Milo to find peace and finally put his own brother's death to rest. Shocking if not startling truths are both heartbreaking and disheartening. How it leads to reveals of his own brother's state and death is one that has us once again ask ourselves how well do we really know someone - 'Just think: If only' ... ❤️🩹❤️🩹 And when we find out the truth is better than not knowing, when the truth is one that makes you even more saddened that if it had been shared things could have been different.
I kinda teared up at the ending. I know I shouldn't have, but I felt such an empty ache for Milo. He found out the truth, but at what cost? At what gain? They were still no longer with him - a life lost without reason or purpose. And you get to feel that lingering sadness and heartbreak and aching emptiness, in such a poignant gesture that deeply resonated with me or at least he does know now. 🫂 His heart, somehow, can rest easy at a certain peace - the stages of grief finally coming to close.
Liberating and at times cathartic, if not unsettling, it still left me with a deep sense of closure, of how much tolerance and acceptance plays a part in making one's life matter - how we reach for ways to satisfy our desires, despite how unacceptable it may be. And despite how at times the writing faltered into itself, it reminded me of how fleeting life is and that for the sake of preserving our memory of ones we hold dear, we have to at times even be willing to accept and admit the truth, no matter what it may be. 🙏🏻
*Thank you to Edelweiss for a DRC in exchange for an honest review.
“The real truth is an awful truth, isn’t it?”
The alternative title to Milo's Reckoning is aptly so.. For while it very much, indeed, is a reckoning for Milo to come terms with his beloved Professor's death, as well as understand the motive behind it, it is also a heartfelt Love Song For Carlo, his older brother who died in a tragic accident a few years ago, and he and his mother, Rose Marie, were never able to quite receive the much-needed closure to his unexplainable car accident that stole their family member from their lives. 💔💔
It is the craftiness in which Milo's life is intertwined with how details unfolded regarding his enigmatic Lenny D'Ambrosio's death that inadvertently led him to clues concerning his own brother's accident that kept me intrigued. It becomes apparent that while he is grieving the sudden death of his professor, it was still the deep hurt and sense of loss of Carlo that he and his mother have not been able to neither forget - '... how awful it’s been for us not knowing...' 😔
From the Italian streets of New York and his classes at NYU, Milo becomes embroiled if not fascinated with the seedy underground dealings of the Italian sex trade, which sheds light on a side of both of them he was not aware of. It is in that case, his reckoning - '...you often see the most ordinary people taking these kinds of unfathomable and extraordinary risks.'. To come to terms with the honest realization of how much of their lives he had not been privy to that led to circumstances not in his control. There is an aching sadness and a sense of regret that permeates throughout Milo's thoughts and actions that keeps you compelled to continue. 🥺
“Let’s be honest: You have strong reasons for not wanting to believe he could have killed himself.”
“Of course I have strong reasons! He was my mentor! I modeled myself after him. If he killed him- self, it casts doubt on everything—everything I ever learned from him.”
It is commendable to note how straightforward the author is in highlighting the pornography dealings of a lucrative business, where they cater to a certain form and hiring a certain class of actors that have no other means to earn a living. It is painful and distraught - distasteful and unpleasant, but Milo has to know the truth - to understand. For a man so cultured and learned to be entertained by such - entertainment; or for his brother to even not be caught up in it, but to know those who deal with it - to just know why? And how? Being his trusted protégé, holding him in such high esteem, his love for Italian literature and the language, itself, it is a struggle deeply felt in his intent investigation into Lenny's past and life of what he was not privy to. 😟
Without prejudice - simply matter-of-fact, without justification, simply stating it as it was. No need to romanticize it or depict it in a fashion overly exaggerated to appeal to one's senses. No sense of denial or retribution, almost conciliatory and defensive of how the ones in charge keep emotions out of it; 'anyone watching these videos is watching fiction, not reality. It’s all staged; it’s just really edgy.' As horrifying as it is to believe such acts of depravity and shame exist, Milo does become more self-aware to how much he was not aware of. 😢 For as much as he has learned in Italian language and literature, he finds himself very much at a loss of what it means to be a person and value others' feelings and regard them for it. How it is not so much as exploitation, no matter how Milo views it as such, but simply a way for those without hope of future prospects to find means to love and survive.
“The measure of grief over someone you love is equal to the amount you loved them.”
In the end, Lenny's apparent suicide was the much-needed catalyst for Milo to find peace and finally put his own brother's death to rest. Shocking if not startling truths are both heartbreaking and disheartening. How it leads to reveals of his own brother's state and death is one that has us once again ask ourselves how well do we really know someone - 'Just think: If only' ... ❤️🩹❤️🩹 And when we find out the truth is better than not knowing, when the truth is one that makes you even more saddened that if it had been shared things could have been different.
I kinda teared up at the ending. I know I shouldn't have, but I felt such an empty ache for Milo. He found out the truth, but at what cost? At what gain? They were still no longer with him - a life lost without reason or purpose. And you get to feel that lingering sadness and heartbreak and aching emptiness, in such a poignant gesture that deeply resonated with me or at least he does know now. 🫂 His heart, somehow, can rest easy at a certain peace - the stages of grief finally coming to close.
Liberating and at times cathartic, if not unsettling, it still left me with a deep sense of closure, of how much tolerance and acceptance plays a part in making one's life matter - how we reach for ways to satisfy our desires, despite how unacceptable it may be. And despite how at times the writing faltered into itself, it reminded me of how fleeting life is and that for the sake of preserving our memory of ones we hold dear, we have to at times even be willing to accept and admit the truth, no matter what it may be. 🙏🏻
*Thank you to Edelweiss for a DRC in exchange for an honest review.
June 30, 2025
Milo’s Reckoning is a page turner. It moves quickly, drawing the reader along as the protagonist struggles to come to terms with the painful and deeply mysterious loss of his beloved mentor. With every revelation along the way, Milo comes closer to unraveling a knotted web, discovering things that would have once been unthinkable to him, the devastating truth of his mentor’s secret life. Highly recommended.
June 24, 2025
This is accidental. I was trying to edit my bio and I hit the wrong button.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews