When Alex Massolini's brother is killed in Vietnam, he drops out of Columbia University and leaves his conservative family behind for Capri to become secretary to Rupert Grant, a famous British novelist and poet who dominates the island like a latter -- day Prospero. Alex...
A poet and biographer, Jay Parini is also a novelist whose fiction has been acclaimed as "dazzli/ng," ( Los Angeles Times ) "achingly beautiful," ( Washington Post ) and "a subtle masterpiece" (John Bayley in the Times Literary Supplement ). In his new novel, The Apprentice Lover...