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The Apprentice Lover
When Alex Massolini's 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.
The Apprentice Lover traces a young American's enchantment and disenchantment -- with his American past, his new European mentor, and the various inhabitants on an island famous for its characters.
The Apprentice Lover traces a young American's enchantment and disenchantment -- with his American past, his new European mentor, and the various inhabitants on an island famous for its characters.
- GenresFictionItalyLiterature
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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About the author
Jay Parini
191 books152 followersJay Parini (born 1948) is an American writer and academic. He is known for novels and poetry, biography and criticism.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 28, 2023
Caprice
An aspiring writer from a working class, conservative Italian-American family goes to the louche literary court of a famous Scottish writer, living in Capri. Alex drops out of Columbia a few months before graduating, in the aftermath of his brother’s death in Vietnam. He writes to his hero, Rupert Grant, asking for a job - and is offered a live-in role as a secretary-cum-amanuensis. He’s an immature 22-year old, “a virgin… in all but body”, and plans to keep a diary, partly so he might one day write a biography of Grant.
Rupert lives in Villa Clio with his wife, Vera (their teenage children are at boarding school in England), and two young female assistants/researchers: Holly (British-American) and Marisa (Italian), plus a gardener and housekeeper. There are frequent guests, too. Everyone is under Rupert’s spell, some more knowingly and less helplessly than others. Alex is too, but he’s also beguiled by Holly and Marisa.
“Everything I had been led to believe about love and marriage was put on hold as I strode forward into this brave old world.”
It’s all a bit Bloomsbury.
Image: La Rondinaia, Gore Vidal’s villa on the Amalfi coast. He visits Rupert’s villa. (Source)
The setting is gorgeous; the people, less so. But they are fascinating: individually, but mainly the tangled dynamics between them, with Rupert a Svengali figure akin to many of Iris Murdoch's (though Alex likens him to Prospero), and acolytes who are "fellow sufferers of an obscure disease". Alex is well-read, but struggles with the erudite, competitive banter - until he realises it’s performative and partly to showcase Rupert.
“One could say outrageous things in this company, testing them on the air, propositionally.”
Fact, fiction, reinvention
This is a fictional memoir, looking back on a seminal period in the narrator’s youth, with some backstory, and letters his brother sent from Vietnam. Although I’m sure many of the characters have elements of actual people, they are Parini’s creations. They discuss how to write, and critique real literary and artistic figures, some of whom they know:
“I felt a mingling of awe and suspicion whenever he dropped luminous names.”
But a few (Vidal, Auden, and Greene) appear as characters in the narrative. In lesser hands, it could be a mess, but it works seamlessly and makes Rupert’s acerbic pontifications about other authors more authentic. He dismisses Hemingway as “a silly man, a minor figure” who wrote “baby talk”, but concedes Fitzgerald did “pretty writing”.
From their first meeting, Rupert renames Alex as Lorenzo, and the more Alex gets to know Rupert, the more he wants to separate the man he no longer admires from the work he still does admire. That fits with the undercurrent of life stories, reinvention, and the issue of where truth lies.
“How was it possible to sort through the distortions of history? Wasn’t history itself a kind of fiction?”
Image: Villa Jovis, Tiberius’s villa on Capri, features in the story (Source)
Exchanging letters with his parents, Alex realises he is drifting further from home, even as he stays put:
“I had tried to become a different person on Capri… and to some extent succeeded.”
The plot, especially the epilogue, held few surprises (perhaps because of Murdoch echoes), but that didn't detract from my enjoyment.
I find Parini’s prose engrossing in ways I can’t explain. I have almost nothing in common with Alex, yet I felt at one with him.
See also
• Parini’s memoir of an extraordinary summer, Borges and Me. In that, Parini’s mentor, Alastair Reid, recounts his time working for Robert Graves in Majorca, and I wonder if one RG inspired the other. See my review, HERE.
• Parini knew Gore Vidal quite well and wrote an authorised biography. I’ve not read that, but there seem to be two versions: Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal and/or Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies: The Life of Gore Vidal.
• Anything by Iris Murdoch, but of more than a dozen I’ve read, perhaps A Fairly Honourable Defeat, featuring another Rupert, and which I reviewed HERE.
Quotes
• “The British do not so much travel as transport their ways to better climates.”
• “Ego was vividly on display everywhere as dusk settled and all heavenly and earthly bodies swelled… Every major celestial object had a swirl of light around it, but the whole event most evidently reflected the pull of Rupert Grant, a mysterious field-force that attracted everyone who encountered him.”
• “It’s all death here. Even the sex drips death like water in a dark cave.” [letter from Vietnam]
• “Writers are all murderers in disguise.”
• “Vesuvius was faintly visible, an exhausted legend wreathed in scarlet haze.”
• “Below me, the sea moved through shelves of opaline translucence.”
• “Girls whose future lies elsewhere. They’re all in the business of creating a naughty past for their future fantasies about themselves.” [someone describing Rupert’s “type”]
• “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” [there are many variants of this, with even more attributions]
An aspiring writer from a working class, conservative Italian-American family goes to the louche literary court of a famous Scottish writer, living in Capri. Alex drops out of Columbia a few months before graduating, in the aftermath of his brother’s death in Vietnam. He writes to his hero, Rupert Grant, asking for a job - and is offered a live-in role as a secretary-cum-amanuensis. He’s an immature 22-year old, “a virgin… in all but body”, and plans to keep a diary, partly so he might one day write a biography of Grant.
Rupert lives in Villa Clio with his wife, Vera (their teenage children are at boarding school in England), and two young female assistants/researchers: Holly (British-American) and Marisa (Italian), plus a gardener and housekeeper. There are frequent guests, too. Everyone is under Rupert’s spell, some more knowingly and less helplessly than others. Alex is too, but he’s also beguiled by Holly and Marisa.
“Everything I had been led to believe about love and marriage was put on hold as I strode forward into this brave old world.”
It’s all a bit Bloomsbury.
Image: La Rondinaia, Gore Vidal’s villa on the Amalfi coast. He visits Rupert’s villa. (Source)
The setting is gorgeous; the people, less so. But they are fascinating: individually, but mainly the tangled dynamics between them, with Rupert a Svengali figure akin to many of Iris Murdoch's (though Alex likens him to Prospero), and acolytes who are "fellow sufferers of an obscure disease". Alex is well-read, but struggles with the erudite, competitive banter - until he realises it’s performative and partly to showcase Rupert.
“One could say outrageous things in this company, testing them on the air, propositionally.”
Fact, fiction, reinvention
This is a fictional memoir, looking back on a seminal period in the narrator’s youth, with some backstory, and letters his brother sent from Vietnam. Although I’m sure many of the characters have elements of actual people, they are Parini’s creations. They discuss how to write, and critique real literary and artistic figures, some of whom they know:
“I felt a mingling of awe and suspicion whenever he dropped luminous names.”
But a few (Vidal, Auden, and Greene) appear as characters in the narrative. In lesser hands, it could be a mess, but it works seamlessly and makes Rupert’s acerbic pontifications about other authors more authentic. He dismisses Hemingway as “a silly man, a minor figure” who wrote “baby talk”, but concedes Fitzgerald did “pretty writing”.
From their first meeting, Rupert renames Alex as Lorenzo, and the more Alex gets to know Rupert, the more he wants to separate the man he no longer admires from the work he still does admire. That fits with the undercurrent of life stories, reinvention, and the issue of where truth lies.
“How was it possible to sort through the distortions of history? Wasn’t history itself a kind of fiction?”
Image: Villa Jovis, Tiberius’s villa on Capri, features in the story (Source)
Exchanging letters with his parents, Alex realises he is drifting further from home, even as he stays put:
“I had tried to become a different person on Capri… and to some extent succeeded.”
The plot, especially the epilogue, held few surprises (perhaps because of Murdoch echoes), but that didn't detract from my enjoyment.
I find Parini’s prose engrossing in ways I can’t explain. I have almost nothing in common with Alex, yet I felt at one with him.
See also
• Parini’s memoir of an extraordinary summer, Borges and Me. In that, Parini’s mentor, Alastair Reid, recounts his time working for Robert Graves in Majorca, and I wonder if one RG inspired the other. See my review, HERE.
• Parini knew Gore Vidal quite well and wrote an authorised biography. I’ve not read that, but there seem to be two versions: Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal and/or Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies: The Life of Gore Vidal.
• Anything by Iris Murdoch, but of more than a dozen I’ve read, perhaps A Fairly Honourable Defeat, featuring another Rupert, and which I reviewed HERE.
Quotes
• “The British do not so much travel as transport their ways to better climates.”
• “Ego was vividly on display everywhere as dusk settled and all heavenly and earthly bodies swelled… Every major celestial object had a swirl of light around it, but the whole event most evidently reflected the pull of Rupert Grant, a mysterious field-force that attracted everyone who encountered him.”
• “It’s all death here. Even the sex drips death like water in a dark cave.” [letter from Vietnam]
• “Writers are all murderers in disguise.”
• “Vesuvius was faintly visible, an exhausted legend wreathed in scarlet haze.”
• “Below me, the sea moved through shelves of opaline translucence.”
• “Girls whose future lies elsewhere. They’re all in the business of creating a naughty past for their future fantasies about themselves.” [someone describing Rupert’s “type”]
• “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” [there are many variants of this, with even more attributions]
February 15, 2009
Beautiful prose, great characters. Occasional lapses that make you want to take the editor (more than the writer) to task. Parini taught me the word, Bildingsroman, at Bread Loaf in 1997, and this is certainly one.
March 17, 2010
Straight onto my top ten novels list. Beautifully written and composed. Reminded me a bit of John Fowles's The Magus, without the metaphysical element. Hard to put down but something to read again to really appreciate the quality of the writing without rushing to know the outcome.
February 6, 2008
I liked it. I thought it was beautifully written. The story unfolded so nicely and ended realistically. I loved the characters in it, all so different but they mesh and clash wonderfully.
December 31, 2017
Solid literary fiction, which means wonderful writing, interesting characters, and not much in the way of plot. (Yet another reminder of why, when I want something literary, I tend to stick with the 19th century, when authors actually seemed to think a plot something worth having.)
June 17, 2009
I actually finished a book! I think I liked it, but hard to remember how it started, it took me so long! Gotta give stars to a Midd prof and a lover of Bob Frost!
August 25, 2023
Well written with characters I really enjoyed. I could relate so much to the narrator despite our difference, in gender, age, & superficial life experience. I will definitely be reading more by this author.
September 3, 2018
I enjoyed this book immensely. Beautiful writing.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
October 6, 2023
4.5 rounded up.
January 15, 2016
I'd read Parini's biography of Gore Vidal, and was intrigued to discover his other works, and found this book to be refreshing, wise, and a study of wisdom and pain, and maturity...Bildungsroman material here.
The language and style is very approachable, and Alex Massolini is a compelling protagonist, especially since he balances his appreciation of Rupert Grant, the waspish writer he serves, with an awareness that matures him in seeing the world of literature and real life make their own demands on everyone. Also, I enjoyed Alex's growing understanding of coming to terms with the death of his brother. There is a lot of balance in this book...classical, literary, human. We get the literary genius of Gore Vidal, Grant, Auden, and others, but also the down to earth appeal of Bonano and Patrice. Alex grows, and I grew with him. There was nothing forced or dull about this book. Also, his love affairs with Marisa and Holly were sad but inevitable. All the characters came alive and gave a happy, enlightening read. The descriptions of Capri were evocative, and I enjoyed how other writers, such as Rilke, came to guide Alex. One reviewer said this book reminded him of Fowle's The Magus, and it did for me and, in a superficial way, Theophilus North, although The Apprentice Lover had more drama and shape. It also gives good advice on writing. The recreation of the 1970's and Vietnam, as well as a wide range of views that the characters have of that war, remind me very much of that era. The ending was almost anticlimactic, but concluded in a fitting manner. I enjoyed this book, and want to explore more of Parini's works. I enjoyed this world, and saw a little of myself in it.
The language and style is very approachable, and Alex Massolini is a compelling protagonist, especially since he balances his appreciation of Rupert Grant, the waspish writer he serves, with an awareness that matures him in seeing the world of literature and real life make their own demands on everyone. Also, I enjoyed Alex's growing understanding of coming to terms with the death of his brother. There is a lot of balance in this book...classical, literary, human. We get the literary genius of Gore Vidal, Grant, Auden, and others, but also the down to earth appeal of Bonano and Patrice. Alex grows, and I grew with him. There was nothing forced or dull about this book. Also, his love affairs with Marisa and Holly were sad but inevitable. All the characters came alive and gave a happy, enlightening read. The descriptions of Capri were evocative, and I enjoyed how other writers, such as Rilke, came to guide Alex. One reviewer said this book reminded him of Fowle's The Magus, and it did for me and, in a superficial way, Theophilus North, although The Apprentice Lover had more drama and shape. It also gives good advice on writing. The recreation of the 1970's and Vietnam, as well as a wide range of views that the characters have of that war, remind me very much of that era. The ending was almost anticlimactic, but concluded in a fitting manner. I enjoyed this book, and want to explore more of Parini's works. I enjoyed this world, and saw a little of myself in it.
June 12, 2013
There are some beautiful images and turns of phrase in this novel--the fact that its author is also a poet is clear--but in my view it doesn't really hang together. Many details in the reflections on the past are repeated unnecessarily, and I think a number of passages are misplaced. Also, I never really developed a particular liking for the narrator. I didn't dislike him particularly, but wasn't especially concerned about his welfare. Several of the other characters seem more fully drawn.
November 24, 2010
Seems like a book written early in an experienced author's career. The characters are mostly dislikeable, especially the two main male characters. There are surprising lapses in grammar. Despite this, the plot is moderately interesting, and it held my attention to the end.
January 25, 2008
I really enjoyed this book. It made me want to visit Capri.
I loved the character development, and how strong the central characters were.
I loved the character development, and how strong the central characters were.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews