Recent History

by Anthony Giardina

"Luca Carcera is twelve years old in 1962, growing up in a comfortable Italian American neighborhood in Massachusetts, when his father suddenly moves out of the house under mysterious circumstances and surfaces across town, in a run-down rooming house, living with another man. In the aftermath of his parents' separation, Luca finds himself shocked as well by his mother's burgeoning sexuality as she longs for male companionship. And what about Luca's own sexual awakening? Is his unusually intense friendship with a boy at school merely a weapon with which to get back at his father? And yet he's also drawn to his pretty, female next-door neighbor. Overwhelmed by the sheer power of sex to shatter the status quo, Luca shuts down.". "By the time Luca reaches adulthood, intimacy has become the watchword in relationships; men are expected to explore their own emotional terrain. The old world of Luca's father's generation, in which men can hide behind their material successes, has vanished. Luc