New Yorker: "In this comic novel, two expats try to live on the same Tuscan mountaintop for the summer without killing each other."

In this comic novel, two expats try to live on the same Tuscan mountaintop for the summer without killing each other: Gerald, an effete English snob and amateur cook who makes his living as a ghostwriter; and Marta, a bohemian composer from a crime family in a former Soviet republic. Hamilton-Paterson quickly seduces the reader with the perfectly captured acerbic tone and timing of Gerald and Marta’s badinage. Secondary characters include the bald, crystal-wearing star of a British boy band and an avant-garde Italian film director (making what turns out to be high-budget pornography). The most memorable element of this inventive story, however, is Gerald’s recipes, which punctuate the text; they include Mussels in Chocolate, Garlic and Fernet Branca Ice Cream, and Alien Pie, a dish made from smoked cat and a drop of kerosene, and garnished with a buzzard feather.