Name: The Parting Gift: A Novel
Price: 16.77 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 3.9 (18 reviews)

Product Description


“An unabashed tale that does not pull punches and looks at love’s underside…This breathless story should only be read in one sitting. It hits hard and never lets up. Terse, brusque, etched on one’s inner thigh with an old serrated knife.” —André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your NameThis erotic tale of jealousy, obsession, and revenge is suffused with the rich flavors and intoxicating scents of Israel’s Mediterranean coast.

An unnamed narrator writes a letter to an old college friend, Adam, with whom he has been staying since his abrupt return to the States from Israel. Now that the narrator is moving on to a new location, he finally reveals the events that led him to Adam’s door, set in motion by a chance encounter with Uzi, a spice merchant whose wares had developed a cult following.

From his first meeting with Uzi, the narrator is overwhelmed by an animal attraction that will lead him to derail his life, withdraw from friends and extend his stay in a small town north of Tel Aviv. As he becomes increasingly entangled in Uzi’s life—and by extension the lives of Uzi’s ex-wife and children—his passion turns sinister, ultimately threatening all around him. 

Written in a circuitous style that keeps you guessing until the end, 
The Parting Gift is a page-turner and a shrewd exploration of the roles men assume, or are forced to assume, as lovers, as fathers, as Israelis, as Palestinians.


Review


“An erotic, mysterious novel.” —
New York Times Book Review
“A feverish and hypnotic epistolary novel, and a tantalizing literary treat. While wholly its own creation, readers may feel the influences of Patricia Highsmith (the sense of mounting dread) and Edmund White (the white-hot sexual encounters are salacious, surprising and erotic)…haunting, emotionally satisfying and beautifully written.” —
Shelf Awareness (starred review) 

“Magnetic…a complicated study of the ways in which religious heritage—from codes of honor to familial expectations—interacts with business and acceptance, family and lovers, and self-realization…A beautiful novel whose only fault is ending too soon.” —
Kirkus Reviews
“Riveting…Fallenberg writes with a quiet yet rising intensity that draws the reader into the story.”
—The Advocate, The Best Books We Read in 2018: LGBTQ Novels
  
 “Fallenberg lushly describes the physical aspects of this passion in rich and supple language, making this a very sexy read.” —
Lambda Literary
  
 “Intoxicating…Fallenberg is a fearless writer; particularly on the vulnerability and rawness of desire. His crisp taut sentences compel us to keep reading.”
—Jerusalem Post 
  
 “Keeps us glued to the page…a well-written, compelling novel with a bold narrative that explores the frailty of human relationships, same-sex and otherwise.”
 
—Times of Israel 
  
 “A suspenseful page-turner of personal entanglement.” —
World Literature Today
  
 “Fascinating…a sharp, short, streamlined text, compelling and vividly readable from the first sentence, and falling easily into that category of books which are ‘difficult to put down.’” —
Entropy

“
The Parting Gift is itself a gift, an intricate and complex story, beautifully and tenderly told. It offers one surprise after another and accomplishes what only great literature can by compelling us to confront the parts of ourselves we’d rather not look at.” —Imbolo Mbue, 
New York Times bestselling author of 
Behold the Dreamers
 
“This is a perfect little book—a whip-crack of a story, propelling us so seamlessly and irresistibly from vulnerability to viciousness, from the familiar to the monstrous, that it’s in a class with 
Lolita and 
Rebecca. In prose both sensuous and eviscerating, Evan Fallenberg sweeps us onward where we’d otherwise drag our feet, into terrain where one loses track of just who is twisting the knife in the narrator, in the reader, in the soul of a country.” —Rachel Kadish, author of 
The Weight of Ink
 
“Intoxicating. Intense. Impiously pure. Evan Fallenberg h

The Parting Gift: A Novel | Price history

Price change log

Product Stats