Something Great And Beautiful: A Novel of Love, Wall Street, and Focaccia

(Paperback)

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Sympathetic, good-for-nothing Rosso Fiorentino leaves the beautiful Italian Riviera to follow the woman he loves to America, and soon finds himself the hero of a darkly funny tale when his improbable business plan becomes the rage on Wall Street. Rosso Fiorentino, a charming loser who dreams of becoming a writer, falls in love with Chloe, a brilliant young woman with a troubled past. They meet in India, where famous Italian novelist the Maestro has decided to spend his last days. They cross paths again in Portofino, and Rosso, following the Maestro's injunction to finally do something worthwhile with his life, enlists the help of his friends, a baker and a street peddler, to follow Chloe to America and sell focaccia on the streets of New York. While Rosso struggles to make a living with odd jobs, Chloe, now armed with a law degree from Chicago, gets hired by a top Wall Street firm. Rosso is eventually able to achieve his dream, opening a little bakery in Queens, followed by a second on Broadway. The business is an instant success. The banks start throwing money at him, and overnight the company undergoes the largest IPO in U.S. history. At least until the bubble bursts and all plays out in a New York courtroom. This modern fairy tale about ambition, hubris, love, and redemption exposes the absurdity of the 2008 global meltdown, and foreshadows the future, all with scintillating wit.

Reviews

One ofBookRiots Best Food Books from 2018

Pellegrinieffectively mocks the Wall Street establishmententertaining. Wall Street Journal

If you dont understand the 2008 financial crisis partially through the lens of the pursuit for a sandwich: youve missed (and should not) Pellegrinis new novelAll satire and indulgence, this is one worth breaking your nonfiction diet for. BookRiot

Must-read. New York Post

This darkly funny, plot-twisting novelwill entertain you. Town& Country, The Five Books Everyone Will Be Talking About in September

Both a love story and a witty indictment of the boom-or-bust cycles of the financial world,Something Great and Beautifulis an enjoyable, almost mythical tale written with flair and searing insight. Booklist

Incisive and satiricalThis deceptively light-hearted comedy invites readers to ruminate on what exactly happened with the financial crisis and who is to blameappealingly offbeat. Foreword Reviews

This delightfully preposterous send-up of the 2008 economic crash doesnt disappoint[Something Great and Beautiful] skewers the absurdities of Wall Street, combining the comic with the trenchant to create a winning recipe. Library Journal

[A] new delicious novelcharming. Lucy Sykes,New York Timesbestselling author ofThe Knockoff

Focaccia and money are very different sorts of bread: here they mingle in a heady, well-paced tale of murky finance, narrated by a very talented author. Alexander McCall Smith, author of the bestselling No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series

Vividly cinematic, wickedly funny, searingly realistic, and intoxicatingly romantic. Enrico PellegrinisSomething Great and Beautifulis indeed beautiful, and a great read. Ruby Namdar, author ofThe Ruined House

A dazzling story in which sex and finance are interwoven. I couldnt stop reading it. Lady Antonia Fraser, author ofMarie Antoinette

What an improbable match: a story of love, Wall Street, and focaccia! Delicious! Donald Bogle, author ofElizabeth and Michael: The Queen of Hollywood and the King of PopA Love Story

I dont know what its like to be rich and bedeviled, but Enrico Pellegrini does, or at least the narrator of his Dionysian romp of a novel does. With crystalline, delightful, surprising, and above all exuberant prose, we are drawn irresistibly into this world of people whose lives ought to be so fun and easy, and turn out to be even more confusing and discombobulating than our own. If Aristophanes were alive today, he would write just like Pellegrini: he makes us laugh, with sympathy, at the gods disguised as people who are living among us. Clancy Martin, author ofLove and Lies

This wonderful new book is a must read! Love it!Kelly Rutherford

The true wolves of Wall Street from someone who knows them well. Vanity Fair(Italy)

Author Bio

Enrico Pellegrini was born in Turin, Italy, in 1971. While pursuing a successful career as a lawyer, he made his literary debut at the age of nineteen with the novel Cuor di Panna, and his second novel, La Negligenza, won the prestigious Premio Selezione Campiello. His third novel, Something Great and Beautiful, first written in English, was recently published in Italy to wide critical acclaim under the title Ai nostri desideri.