In Pacifico’s debut, “The Story of My Purity,” the protagonist is an editor at a hard-right Catholic publishing house; he’s obsessed with Judaism to the point of antisemitism and with his virginal sister-in-law’s breasts to the point of impotence.
Pacifico’s third novel, “The Women I Love,” finds the writer in a more contemplative, even melancholy mood.
It’s a turn that suggests a kind of fulfillment — emotional, rather than professional or social — that might be worth at least the carbon footprint required to document it in a book.
“Eleonora” is the younger editor whose career Marcello shepherds and with whom he cheats on his live-in girlfriend.
Describing an evening at the theater with his mother, Marcello notes “the kinship of our bodies, the same way we both rush to take our seats and then never quite settle in.” In his previous novels, Pacifico sketched a parental relationship important above all for its financial benefits.
When, late in the novel, a sexual encounter that at first seems consensual becomes an assault, he remains largely descriptive, conveying his feelings in the moment without pretending these can excuse his behavior.
“Words are the purifying fire,” Pacifico writes in “Class.” “Purgatory is an area of pure language in which the dead examine, alone but guided by the invisible force of the angels, the shortcomings of their life.” Pacifico’s first two novels skewered their characters’ shortcomings; they were also, notably, narrated at least in part by characters who turned out to be dead.