[PRE-RELEASE REVIEW - VIA NETGALLEY] This was tough for me to get into and I don’t feel like I was necessarily in the mind set to be reading this to be honest. I was hoping for a plot, but it’s more of a philosophical dive into life, death, and identity. The characters’ introspections and reflections on existence took the front seat, leaving me wanting more action.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers Hodder & Stoughton for the opportunity to read this e-ARC.

Originally published in 1989, Separate Rooms was the final novel by Italian author Pier Vittorio Tondelli, released just two years before his passing from AIDS.

Now, it is being published in the UK on April 24th, featuring an introduction by André Aciman, the bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name.

Separate Rooms follows Leo, an Italian writer who, at the beginning of the novel, loses his former boyfriend, Thomas, a German musician to AIDS. Unable to watch Thomas slowly die, Leo embarks on a journey across Europe and then to America in an attempt to hide, almost running away from the hardships of adulthood,  to rediscover himself.

Throughout this process of self-discovery, grief, and loss, he reflects on their relationship. He recalls their first encounter, his desire to live separately whilst still together (separate rooms), and reflects on his own behavior—not only in this relationship but in a previous one. He revisits memories of his childhood, family dynamics, friendships, and his relationship with God and religion. Most importantly, he contemplates his deep need for solitude. The novel is structured in three movements through his introspective journey.

However, the time jumps can be confusing. I’m unsure whether this was due to the formatting of the e-ARC or if it’s an aspect of the author's narrative, but it occasionally made me disorientated. The pacing, particularly in the second movement, felt slow and dragged at times. I found that I was struggling and had to push myself, which is why I couldn’t give it a full five stars. Fortunately, the pacing picked up, again, in the third movement.

This was a beautifully written novel about self-reflection, grief, and finding oneself after loss. Leo is flawed—at times even toxic, if I might say —but there is no denying the love he had for Thomas.
Tondelli’s writing is melancholic, and it deeply moved me. There are parta that are intense, immersing us fully into Leo's thoughts and emotions.

At its core, Separate Rooms is a story about love and its complexities—how easy it is to hurt the ones we love and how love alone isn’t always enough if two people see relationships differently. Leo’s journey feels like a late coming-of-age story, as he struggles with self-acceptance in his 30s while reflecting on all he has left behind.
There is so much to analyze and discuss in this novel, from its themes of love, solitude, grief, loss, self-acceptance, self-reflection, awareness, and the portrayal of queer love and identity during a difficult era.

I think it's amazing how Tondelli was able to capture and write the complexities and struggles of being gay in the 1980s. Some passages deeply touch me, such as:
"Now he had to give serious thought to the notion of living together with another man. But he had no models to follow, no experience to recycle and fall back on in this stage of their relationship. He knew that the love he still felt for Thomas would not be enough on its own. (...) Living together meant believing in values that neither of them was capable of recognising. How would their love end? Would they have no option but to normalise a relationship that society was, in fact, incapable of accepting as something normal?"

It seems that Separate Rooms is being adapted into a film. While I’m usually not a fan of book-to-film adaptations, I’m curious to see how they bring this story to life.

Very good.

Gosh. This is an Italian novel originally published in 1989, just a few years before the author's own death due to AIDS and soon to be published in England in the US for the first time. Thanks to Zando and NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for my review.

This book is stunningly melancholy, so beautifully written and translated. We follow Leo as he flees his dying boyfriend Thomas's bedside and travels around the globe reflecting on himself, his relationships, and who he'll become after Thomas. Truthfully, Leo is a troubling character to sit with. He carries the trauma of being someone deeply religious and attuned to the aesthetics of religious practice but can no longer access them in the same way because he's gay. He loves his partners but keeps them distant (an agreement he and Thomas term "separate rooms"), in part because he feels that since he cannot fully belong to another man in society's eyes the same way he could fully belong to another woman. His relationships are volatile and he and his partners don't treat each other that well, but there's some aspect of Leo that finds this cathartic. Which becomes a little more literal in an erotic back room scene in the third act that I found...dizzying.

All that said, he's not a tragic caricature; he's complex and well-developed, ultimately coming to an understanding that while he craves connection and community that he's willing and able to build, he ultimately needs to be single. The book resolves, which I don't always expect in a short literary fiction of this style. While reading, I felt an incredible range of emotion and some passages kept me so captivated I could barely breathe -  including the best narrativization of a psychedelic trip that I've ever read. Unfortunately, it drags a little bit in the middle but is well worth the push.

What a treasure to finally have published to an American audiences. We have really missed out on this beautiful piece of queer literary history.

I really just floated through this book—it felt like a dream. The constant jumps in the timeline might be jarring at first, but they felt very intentional. They really put me in Leo’s mindset, making me feel his grief, loneliness, confusion, and longing to understand.