The House of Gazes - by Daniele Mencarelli (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2019 John Fante First Novel Prize

The critically acclaimed novel from the author of Everything Calls for Salvation, adapted into a Netflix Original series, is a powerful coming-of-age story about loss, identity, and rebirth

Daniele is a young poet plagued by an unknown darkness, "an invisible disease of the heart, or of the mind." He refuses to conform to society's expectations--finding a job, starting a family--yet he struggles to define a path of his own and find a sense of purpose in life.

In a desperate attempt to pull himself out of a dangerous spiral of emptiness and self-destruction, Daniele accepts a job at a pediatric hospital in Rome, the Bambino Gesù, where he'll work with sick children, many of them terminally ill. In the "house of gazes," that is, the hospital, through his interactions with patients and co-workers, and forced to confront pain in some of its most heartbreaking forms, Daniele will slowly start to look at life with new eyes, and learn to accept it in all its brutality and beauty.

Writing with the evocative power and sharp focus of a poet, Mencarelli tells a raw and moving story of self-discovery, renewal, and liberation achieved through solidarity and compassion, a story closely inspired by the events of his own life.

Review Quotes

"When a poet who has a strong story to tell decides to write a novel, the result is a masterpiece."--Vanity Fair

"The most important book I have read this year. It's an autobiographical story, I believe, and it's about a rebirth."--La Stampa

"Essential and unforgettable."--la Repubblica

"Like Pasolini's, Mencarelli's is drawn towards the lost, the damned, those at the margins of society. Yet The House of Gazes, his first novel, is not simply a descent into human hell. It is a story of resurrection."--Il Giornale

"Miraculous. "--Il Messaggero

"An evocative work of autofiction...With its bracing view of the hero's interior world, this meditative novel viscerally excoriates the failings of his treatment."--Publishers Weekly on Everything Calls for Salvation