Leo is at the end of his tether, as we hear plenty of times. He moved to Rome to get away from his father who had returned from The War broken. He has little plan other than writing but can’t seem to settle down into marriage and an office job like his siblings.
We meet up with Leo at the end of his tether, financially. It’s no surprise given he hardly shows up to work (and always hungover in the middle of the afternoon). But crashing a friend’s house party when he has nothing to eat leads to a relationship with an architecture student, Arianna, who recently left a psychiatric hospital. Things go well (relative) until summer hits and all of his rich friends leave the city. Everything unravels, and comes back, and unravels, until he has to leave the city as everyone else does.
This is a heft novel that barely makes it past 150 pages. A lot happens (well not much actually happens, but things are rapidly changing) and no words are wasted. The writing moves between elegies towards the city and humor. It feels like a lot of other novels about lost men living a bit irresponsibly (Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, The Stranger?). “Last Summer in the City” is absolutely deserving of its cult classic status.
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