The Story of My Purity

by Francesco Pacifico

Stephen Stephen Twilley (Translator) and Stephen Twilley (Translator)

The Story of My Purity by Francesco Pacifico is an unmissable novel from an exciting young voice in European fiction.

Thirty years old and already trapped in a sexless marriage, Piero Rosini has decided to dedicate his life to Jesus. Novels and music were filling his head with bullshit; his bourgeois life in a fancy neighborhood had taken him far away from spiritual purity and the Lord's truth. So he's moved to an unfinished housing development on the outskirts of Rome and thrown himself into his work at an ultraconservative Catholic publishing house.

Yet still Piero is suffocating. He can't get his beautiful sister-in-law out of his head. Temptations (both physical and intellectual) are breaking down his religious resolve. He decides to flee to Paris, which turns out not to be the best way of guarding his purity.

Pacifico's exuberant novel brings us Europe old and new and the inner workings of a conflicted but always compelling mind. This is fiction with great humour, intelligence, and vision, from a young writer at the beginning of a tremendous career.

Francesco Pacifico has written for a number of Italian publications, as well as for Rolling Stone and GQ, and has translated into Italian the works of Henry Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dave Eggers, Will Eisner, and more. He lives in Rome.

• ISBN10: 0241145058
• ISBN13: 9780241145050
• Publish Date: 2 May 2013 (first published 5 March 2013)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 19 May 2015
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Hamish Hamilton Ltd
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Thirty year old Piero Rosini wants to live a life of purity, wholly dedicated to God with a dream of become a modern day saint. Living in a sexless marriage, Piero spends his days working in a conservative Catholic publishing house. Although this publishing house was not conservative enough; they plan to publish a book that makes the claim that Pope John Paul II was secretly Jewish. He plans to leave and start an ultraconservative publishing house, where he can have more control over the content being released. The Story of My Purity is a novel that explores religion in relationship to faith, freedom and purity.

Living life with the idea of becoming a modern day saint, trying to do everything right and be perfect really sets up the satirical nature of this novel. Saint Augustine of Hippo’s autobiographical book Confessions comes to mind when I think about the difference between Saints and people who try to live a sinless life. I found that this novel really dealt with the idea of spirituality and religion in an interesting way. There is an exploration with the idea of freedom and faith when it comes to organised religion (in this case the Catholic Church).

A little understanding of theology really helps understand The Story of My Purity and the humour behind it. Firstly, when it comes to the seven deadly sins; it is alright to feel envy, greed and so on. The Church’s teaching on the seven deadly sins, is that these are gateways that can lead to trouble, so we should be aware of these feelings and learn to understand them. Although, there have been a lot of misconceptions around the deadly sins, that have led to the concept of Catholic guilt.

For Piero Rosini, he never learned to manage his lust, he went to a priest for help and was told not to think about women. Piero really took this advice on board to the point that he was unable to get an erection to consummate his one marriage. His sexless marriage was a result of him constantly trying to not think about sex, or feel a sexual attraction to his own wife. Although it proves impossible to not have sexual thoughts, and Piero’s life of purity began to unravel with the help of an attraction to his sister-in-law and spam emails.

The satirical nature of this novel comes from the fact people do not understand what the Church says about sex. Pope John Paul II did 129 lectures on the Theology of the Body, going through the Churches views on sex and sexuality. These lectures are about understanding your body, your desires and attraction. The theology should never feel restrictive by religion, rather we should be free and it should correct people’s misassumptions on the Churches teaching. Although the author may not have written this as a satire and this was actually his thoughts on Catholicism.

Unfortunately The Story of My Purity was not a great book, I loved viewing the book as a satire and exploring the theology behind it. However it did take a direction that I did not enjoy and ended up falling on its face. I am fascinated by theology and I feel like this could have been a great novel. The predictability of the book was just too much of a stumbling block for me. I am curious on Francesco Pacifico thoughts on Catholicism; I viewed the book as satire and would hate to think of it as anything else. I have also done a video review on this novel, if you are curious; although I think I talk about all the same ideas.

This review original appeared on my blog; http://www.knowledgelost.org/literature/book-reviews/genre/contemporary/the-story-of-my-purity-by-francesco-pacifico/