The Everlasting

November 18, 2019
In this symphonic novel, Smith (Free Men) composes delicate variations on faith, love, and human transience in the eternal city. An American scientist leaves his family behind and travels to modern-day Rome to study crustaceans and debates returning after meeting a new woman. In the 16th century, Guilia de Medici, a “bastard princess” with African roots, is married off to a man she loathes, but not before becoming pregnant with her lover’s child. A ninth-century monk presides over his deceased colleagues in the monastery’s putridarium while reflecting on his illicit love for another boy back when he was a teen. In second-century pagan Rome, the early Christian martyr Prisca embraces the new faith at a dangerous time for believers. Smith elegantly ties these narratives together with a fishhook, which, depending on the century, is a utilitarian object, prized relic, or rusty bit of trash. Satan occasionally interrupts the narration with grating apercus (“Oh, chickie, there is no line between pain and want”) but also keen observations on Rome and the novel’s structure: “Rome is a dream; its cobbles are slick with sweat and lust, the stuff of sleep. You cannot move forward here, only up and down.” The further Smith digs into Rome’s layered past, the more captivating the story becomes. This is an ambitious novel whose characters must choose between sensual or spiritual love, gratification or self-abnegation, principled martyrdom or survival. Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency.

January 1, 2020
Rome, past and present, serves as the setting for a sparkling historical novel. Smith (Free Men, 2016, etc.) bounds through 2,000 years of history, following four indelible characters as they grapple with questions of faith, freedom, and transgressive love. Tom, a biologist working in contemporary Rome, is studying ostracods, tiny crustaceans that thrive in polluted, agitated environments. "Are they adapting in the face of disadvantage or are they opportunists of collapse?" Tom asks, aware that his question about ostracods could just as well apply to his own emotional agitation. The married father of a 9-year-old daughter, he has met a young woman who enchants him, impelling him to confront his desperate desire for "an unleashing" and for a love deeper than what he feels for his wife. A child playing in the water where he is investigating suddenly shrieks in pain, pierced by a piece of bent metal, "scaly with corrosion, its silver marred with patches of orange rust." It is a fishhook--maybe a castoff with no value or perhaps an ancient relic: uncanny, miraculous. The fishhook reappears as Smith leaps back to the Renaissance, where it falls into the hands of Giulia, a mixed-race princess newly married to a Medici, pregnant with another man's child. For Giulia, her fortunes embroiled in political and religious rivalries, the fishhook evokes a holier time, before corruption and hypocrisy sullied the church. In ninth-century Rome, Felix, a 60-year-old monk, is tormented by his youthful, forbidden love for Tomaso; assigned to watch over the decaying bodies in the putridarium, Felix comes into possession of the fishhook, guessing--wishing--that it belonged to the martyred St. Prisca, who perhaps "got it direct from Jesus." In the year 165, Prisca did indeed find the hook, secreting it as a precious token. Drawn to worshipping Christ rather than pagan gods, 12-year-old Prisca stands defiant against her violent tormenters. Perhaps Smith's most appealing character is Satan, whose weary, ironic comments punctuate a narrative that shines with lyrical, translucent prose. A compelling, beautifully rendered tale of passion and pain.

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December 1, 2019
Strikingly original in its construction and settings, Smith's novel interleaves four periods in Roman history with eight parts, and the eras move back in time and then repeat. An American aquatic biologist considers an extramarital affair with an Italian woman during a semester abroad and, while there, experiences disturbing neurological symptoms. Giulia de' Medici, a sixteenth-century noblewoman of part-African descent, conceals an illegitimate pregnancy. In gruesomely effective segments, Felix, the late ninth-century keeper of his monastery's putridarium, or crypt, observes the decomposition of his former brethren while remembering his traumatic youth. Lastly, Prisca, a pubescent girl (and future martyr) in 165 CE, has unique personal reasons for embracing Christianity. She and Giulia are historical figures worth discovering. Compared to the others, the modern era's prose feels self-consciously literary, and its research less well-integrated; the earliest-set stories offer the strongest emotional resonance. The four are also linked through a small fishhook figuring in each. Together, they create a robustly earthy, strangely entrancing portrait of the Eternal City as the protagonists cope with the yearnings and frailties of the flesh.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2019

After setting her first two lusciously written novels in 1700s colonial America, Smith bounds across the ocean to Rome. Four interlinked scenarios chronicle a girl who becomes an early Christian child martyr, a medieval monk on ghastly crypt duty in a church, a scheming Medici princess of Moorish descent, and a contemporary field biologist who conducts an affair while his wife and daughter remain in America and his health takes a sudden, terrible turn. Arresting writing and sky-high in-house excitement; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

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