Lorenzo
Hyacinths

Pier undoes himself every night: he gets drunk and drops everything at Blackout, along with the neighborhood kids, and by morning he is a zombie working for a pittance. He lives by inertia, moving on because he has to, and instead of asking for help he has not answered calls for months from his sister, the only one who could save him. At almost 20 years old, Nina also has no dreams or plans, has dropped out of school, and feels empty. She stays indoors all day and goes out at night when her mother goes to bed. She makes herself pretty if she knows Pier is there, puts on heels and a skirt to impress. Yet he barely notices her. Of the whole neighborhood, the only one who has made it is Lucius. He left town after high school, is a journalist, and is accomplished. His path, however, is destined to cross that of the usual once again, when Pier discovers that inside his belly is a baby: a fetus in its eighth week. With direct, cinematic writing that is as sparse as it is precise, Giacinti challenges the reader’s expectations about family, identity and love, writing a novel about the search for self, the consequences of abandonment and the value of belonging, whatever it may be.