Giovanni's Room

Name: Giovanni's Room
Author: James Baldwin

James Baldwin · 1956

Baldwin's 1956 Parisian novel: a white American man falls in love with an Italian bartender while engaged to a woman. The prose is like ice, clear and cold and cutting. It opened a space for literature that simply did not exist before. The most elegantly written American novel about sexuality and shame.

The case against

on David, the narrator
“he’s selfish, dishonest, cruel, extremely judgmental, self-loathing, self-deprecating”
a book blog
on the main characters
“I never completely understood who David, Giovanni, or Hella were.”
a book blog
on the prose style
“it reads almost like a parody of The Master”
three stars · a book blog
on Giovanni’s misogyny
“Giovanni is nice but misogynistic”
a book blog