The Medici Boy
Praise for …
THE MEDICI BOY
“On the basis of Donatello’s great statue of David, and against the background of the witchhunt against gay men in 15th-century Florence, John L’Heureux has built a gripping story of love, genius, and betrayal.”
JM Coetzee, Booker Prize and Nobel Prize for Literature,
Elizabeth Costello, Waiting for the Barbarians, Disgrace.
A novel bursting with love—collegial, artistic and erotic. John L’Heureux brings to life the bliss and treachery of the Italian Renaissance through prose as passionate as his characters. Deeply enjoyable, THE MEDICI BOY soars like an operatic aria, before breaking our hearts.
David Henry Hwang, playwright,
M. Butterfly, Chinglish.
“Intensely appealing, viscerally gripping, and unfailingly human in its characters, L’Heureux’s most recent novel beckons with the undeniable promise of great writing to all lovers of historical literary fiction that easily manages to transcend its time parameters.”
Booklist, Starred Review
TIGHT WHITE COLLAR
“Close to the bone . . . a moving vision of the torments of spiritual solitude.”
The New Republic
THE CLANG BIRDS
“A delicious, rollicking novel.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“John L’Heureux has written an exceedingly funny and intelligent novel that is certain to scrape like heavy sandpaper against a good many thin skins.”
New York Times Book Review
FAMILY AFFAIRS
“Witty, vital, and perspicacious.”
New York Times Book Review
“L’Heureux sits, stodgy as old Chekhov, observing real human beings and putting them on paper, pore by pore. He’s a wise writer, with a wisdom as old as the hills.”
John Gardner
JESSICA FAYER
“Chilling, cutting alarming offbeat, haunting, strangely touching . . . one of John L’Heureux’s finest novels.”
The Boston Globe
“A beautifully crafted and deeply moving work.”
Joyce Carol Oates
DESIRES
“John L’Heureux’s vision is eerie and unmistakably his own. These are oblique, ironic moral fables and they are written in a spare, elegant and witty prose.”
The New York Times Book Review
A WOMAN RUN MAD
“L’Heureux is elegant, cunning, and wickedly funny. The reader will feel played with, but it’s that kind of novel, a psycho-philosophic thriller—and more.”
Washington Post Book World
“One of the most intense reading experiences I’ve had in recent memory. A WOMAN RUN MAD was impossible to put down.”
New York Times Book Review
AN HONORABLE PROFESSION
“Brilliant and complex. Mr. L’Heureux is a deeply ambitious novelist, one who isn’t afraid of dealing with dark themes and what it means to be fully human, especially in the frightening and ecstatic world we create behind the darkened bedroom walls.”
New York Times Book Review
COMEDIANS
“Mr. L’Heureux’s stories work on several levels at once: the serious and comic, the realistic and fantastic, the personal and allegorical. They are not stories you have read before, you will want to read a number of them more than once.”
Washington Times
“COMEDIANS is a treasure . . . L’Heureux’s prose is fascinating and elegantly powerful. It’s a strange, witty, sexy book that’s both wonderful and impossible . . . impossible to put down.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
THE SHRINE AT ALTAMIRA
“John L’Heureux’s fine new novel may not just disturb you but haunt you. Prepare yourself for an ending that’s the obverse of catharsis and that also leaves the reader with no hiding place. In plain, unornamented language L’Heureux is writing about sin and redemption.”
San Francisco Examiner
“L’Heureux’s most ambitious novel . . . Readers will marvel that he has somehow conspired to redeem the unforgivable.”
Los Angeles Times Book Review
THE HANDMAID OF DESIRE
“Wickedly entertaining”
New York Times Book Review
“A subtle literary joke that reflects the unique intelligence of a deeply thoughtful, intensely serious man.”
Washington Post
HAVING EVERYTHING
“A master of understated, ominous moments in a marriage in which not asking the question can be more disastrous than asking. Sharp, moving, poignant.”
Washington Post Book World
“HAVING EVERYTHING is an unforgettable exploration of what it means to become fully human.”
Seattle Times
THE MIRACLE
“L’Heureux seems to be standing on the shoulders of giants.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“Admirable . . . delicately nuanced . . . L’Heureux has created in THE MIRACLE a set of characters who feel fiercely authentic, not least in their contradictions.”
New York Times Book Review
Winner of the gold medal in the Commonwealth Club of California’s book awards, 2002.
PRAISE FOR JOHN L’HEUREUX
“A writer who picks up his readers by the scruff of the neck and won’t let go.”
Chicago Tribune
“A deeply ambitious novelist, one who isn’t afraid of dealing with dark themes and what it means to be fully human, especially in the frightening and ecstatic world we create behind the darkened bedroom walls.”
New York Times Book Review
“L’Heureux’s efforts to weave myth, extremity, and a religious note into modern urban and suburban settings are high risk. The result is powerful and original.”
The Los Angeles Times
The Medici Boy
by
John L’Heureux
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
THE MEDICI BOY
Astor + Blue Editions
Copyright © 2013 by John L’Heureux
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by:
Astor + Blue Editions,
New York, NY 10003
www.astorandblue.com
Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data
L’Huereux, John. THE MEDICI BOY—1st ed.
ISBN: 978-1-938231-50-6 (hard cover)
ISBN: 978-1-938231-49-0 (epdf)
ISBN: 978-1-938231-48-3 (epub)
1. Historical Literary Novel—Fiction 2. Fiction 3. Inspired by the creation of the David by Donatello—Fiction 4. Love Story The illicit love affair between the genius Donatello and his model—Fiction 5. Homo-erotic Love—Fiction 6. 15th century, Italy 7. Florence (Italy) Title
Includes an Afterword by the Author © 2013, bibliography
Book Design: Bookmasters
Jacket Cover Design: Danielle Fiorella
Other Books by John L’Heureux
Quick as Dandelions
Rubrics for a Revolution
Picnic in Babylon
One Eye and a Measuring Rod
No Place for Hiding
Tight White Collar
Family Affairs
The Clang Birds
Jessica Fayer
Desires
A Woman Run Mad
Comedians
An Honorable Profession
The Shrine at Altamira
The Handmaid of Desire
Having Everything
The Miracle
Conversations with John L’Heureux
The author wishes to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial foundation for the generous grant that allowed him to spend a year in Florence researching background for
THE MEDICI BOY
. . . and he particularly thanks André Bernard for his moral support during the writing of this book.
For Joan
only and always
Table of Contents
T
HE
M
EDICI
B
OY
1400–1420
CHAPTER
1
I
T IS RIGHT
and just to confess at the very start that it was fornication that took me out of the Order of Friars Minor and set me on the path of sin. I am an old man—perhaps sixty-seven—and make this confession at leisure and in detail since, imprisoned in this monastery, I have nothing left but time. And, to speak truly, I write this for pleasure as well. Having long left behind me the possibilities of lusting and loving, I find satisfaction in watching my quill move across the page. There is no waste; I use the reverse side of paper that has already been ruined by false starts, ink stains, the wanton mistakes of inattentive copyists. On the finer side of this confession, blotted, you will find Holy Scripture, a nice irony. I have myself served as copyist—and do yet—and I know it is easy to err, even in the service of God.