DON’T TELL THEM YOU’RE AMERICAN: A Novel (IN DEVELOPMENT)

Colleen is a twenty-three-year-old classics major from New York City who moves to Rome to break free from her family, her solicitous but passionless boyfriend, and, generally, America.  Her first Roman encounter is with an art dealer named Lolo, a sexually insatiable Italian Adonis and sadist.  Lolo seduces and manipulates Colleen, and despite his false flattery and his belittling “little tortures,” she cannot walk away because it is through Lolo that she discovers a sensual and cultural awakening. But she soon finds herself in too deep, and, reminiscent of Susan Minot, in a world marked by beauty, deception, and sexual violence, a world she cannot escape.

“Elizabeth writes beautifully. Lolo is one of the best-articulated characters I’ve seen in the recent fiction I’ve read. I almost never laugh out loud when reading, but I did here again and again.”—Amy Hempel

Rights: Union Literary