★ 08/05/2019
In Raimo’s fanged, elliptical tale, her English-language debut, sexual politics roils a tranquil utopia. A philosophy professor and his pregnant girlfriend, both unnamed, are relative newcomers to the island of Miden, an egalitarian society whose “vital serenity” is in marked contrast to their unnamed homeland, which is reeling from a devastating financial collapse. When the professor’s former student and lover declares that she had been raped and “subjected to violence” during their affair, the Commission investigates the allegations to determine whether “the Perpetrator” will be allowed to remain within their community or whether the “violence nesting in could contaminate the social fabric.” The novel is told in alternating chapters from the professor’s and his girlfriend’s perspective as the Commission sends out questionnaires to their acquaintances. The professor, a charming narcissist, finds “a wonderful perversion” in being the center of the denigrating administrative process, while his isolated girlfriend reassesses the choices that have brought her from her moribund country to this besieged paradise. The novel deals in shifting sentiments: between love, revulsion, and desire; hostility toward and identification with the accuser; and between the couple’s ironic stance toward Miden’s stifling contentment and their intense yearning for inclusion in the community. A writer of wry and lucid prose, Raimo sculpts from these ambiguities a crystalline, powerful novel. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners. (Oct.)
Praise for The Girl at the Door
ONE OF TRANSLATED LIT'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF OCTOBER 2019
“ [T]ight and provocative.”—Salon
“File it on the shelf with other recent masterpieces of the #MeToo era, from Sofka Zinovieff’s Putney to Sally Rooney’s Normal People. Raimo’s slim and uncomfortable novel is the opposite of a straightforward polemic . . . But THE GIRL AT THE DOOR earns its moral complexity and its refusals.”—Observer
"With questions of accusation, consent, and prevarication at its center, this unsettling novel, in turns elegant and crude, could not be more timely. Raimo not only deconstructs and upends the narrative, but also explores eternal themes of exile, identity, and belonging. An heir to Atwood and Coetzee, she is one of the most original and exciting writers in Italy today."—Jhumpa Lahiri, author of The Lowland
“This uncompromising, fiercely intelligent novel confirms the moral usefulness of serious art: it reminds us that the world is more complicated than our righteous certainties; it forces us to acknowledge the abyss.”—Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You
“Fierce, intelligent, candid, and erotic, Veronica Raimo has written a devastating modern fable of passion, where acts of betrayal, violence, and sex both sustain and destroy the characters’ lives in unexpected and provocative ways.”—Lily Tuck, author of Sisters
“An astonishing novel that examines moral anguish from original and captivating angles, full of quotable lines and startling insights into conscience and the urge to judge. The novel explores the limits of intimacy, physical and emotional, and is as gripping as anything I’ve read this year. Sexy, dangerous, modern – what’s not to love?”—Richard Beard, author of The Day That Went Missing
“Perfection is not such a beautiful place when you look at it too closely, and Veronica Raimo here enlightens its depths with elegant, mesmerizing and merciless writing.”—La Repubblica
“[The Girl at the Door] talks about harassment, consensus, populism and vigilantism, but also about what we feel when our actions are analyzed from outside and we become characters in someone else's narrative.”—Forbes Italia
“Raimo’s novel will enrich the debate on the most current contemporary issues and at the same time belongs to the international literary scene that today can talk about emotions, individuals and sex in the most interesting and stylistically innovative way: from Catherine Lacey to Sally Rooney.”—Vice Italy
"[The Girl at the Door] is catching and convincing. Veronica Raimo is probably the most emblematic interpreter of fiction exploring the reality of sexual harassment."—L'Espresso
"A surprising novel, as surprising is the setting where it takes place... A novel with an international appeal, we would just love to read more books like this."—Rolling Stone Italy
“In this mysterious and seductive novel, Raimo bravely gives no answers… [The Girl at the Door] is a novel about doubt: its fascination and its fear.”—La Stampa
“A world which reminds one of Disgrace by Coetzee, but here it’s a woman and her anguish at the core of everything. All our certainties collapse, and so collapses the idea we have of ourselves.”—Corriere della sera
“[R]eminiscent of The Scarlet Letter but with a more salacious vocabulary. . . . Provocative reading for the brave.”—Library Journal
"Raimo's novel brilliantly examines jealousies, sexual proclivities and gender prejudices . . . a powerful and timeless statement."—Shelf Awareness
2019-07-15
In an intentional utopian community on an island, a couple deals with the consequences of a sexual accusation.
"Having an affair with a student is never a good idea," ruminates the character known only as Him in Italian author Raimo's first novel to be published in the U.S. But, he continues, "it was statistically almost impossible not to." This professor's pregnant live-in girlfriend, known as Her, has been visited by a girl carrying a letter addressed to the man they have in common. It is an official accusation of repeated rape and sexual violence occurring two years ago, resulting in "TRAUMA no. 215." The girl explains that she didn't realize she was being abused at the time. The novel's mockery of this situation is embedded in a larger sendup of politically correct culture and values, concentrated in an imaginary island called Miden. Created after "the Crash" in the unnamed home country of the protagonists (hint: they eat tiramisu and spaghetti), "the Crash had brought whole countries to their knees, whereas Miden emerged from the deep waters with the splendor of a Venus." Miden is organized by Commissions, in which everyone must participate; both protagonists belong to Organic Pesticides. Diminutives and pet names have been outlawed to prevent women "from being harangued in an untoward or debasing way," and since dressing in layers is required by law, most women wear "handmade raw wool sweaters in Miden colors." When some audacious students print up white T-shirts with the slogan "WE'RE ALL PERPETRATORS," these are soon joined by "WE ARE ALL TREES," "WE ARE ALL OBLIQUE," and "WE ARE ALL CHAIRS." As the professor's friends and associates submit questionnaires to be used at his trial, the couple suffers under the strain. A flowered orange poncho given her by a chromotherapist friend doesn't help the pregnant woman, whose insomnia has become "almost ideological." The verdict looms.
An unusual, witty, provocatively anti-doctrinaire fable.
