Book Description
From the pretensions of the London literary set to social climbing in the world of well-heeled Sydney matrons, Gambotto's razor sharp prose exposes the essential folly at the heart of modern society. Caustic, controversial, exhilarating and provocative, The Pure Weight of the Heart is an unforgettable debut.
Publisher comments
Antonella Gambotto’s extraordinary first novel takes on icons Jay McInerney and Tom Wolfe as it chronicles the ills of the twentieth century with a merciless eye. From the pretensions of the London literary set to social climbing in the world of well-heeled Sydney matrons, Gambotto’s razor-sharp prose exposes the essential folly at the heart of modern society. Caustic, controversial, exhilarating and provocative, this is an unforgettable debut.
Extract - Chapter One:
"I think my parents were bewildered by my oddity.
Conceived in the honeymoon suite of a hotel run by two penitent French fascists in an algid village near Valgrisanche, I was a child of love and not conjugal duty and thus and only thus, as my father once suggested, were certain "vital fluids" conferred unto me. From that now-mythical hotel, the blue-white Alps could be seen through a froth of huge and creamy Sombreuil roses and it was with this realization that my father claimed to know his first child would be female. After a twenty-seven hour labour, I was born by Cesarean section on the cusp of the hour ruled by the angel Gabriel, whom the Mohammedans understand to be the spirit of truth, the ruler of the first heaven and also the angel who came with light to the cave in which Mohammed prayed, that same Mohammed with whom I share a birthday in the northern autumn and subequatorial spring. I emerged surprised and blind and blinking and covered like a monkey in fine long black hairs. For the first three months of life, I wept continuously and then spoke my first sentence at ten. My mother's breasts were suckled by me until they bled a milk-streaked blood. I have been told these things. Only fantasists remember."
