The Conversion [Hardcover]

Joseph Olshan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2008

Russell Todaro, a young American translator, moves to Paris to take stock of his life and goals only to further lose himself in the surprising twists fate has in store for him. One night, two men waving guns and knives break and enter their Paris hotel room, terrorizing Russell and his much older companion, a famous American poet named Edward Cannon. The intruders, not finding what they seemingly expected, leave without further incident but the baffling, traumatic events overwhelm Cannon who dies in his sleep later that night. Now Russell is left to ponder the meaning of the attack, what to do with the poet’s unfinished, problematic memoir and, perhaps most importantly, how to reconstruct and move forward with his own life.

Hearing of the disturbing circumstances of  Cannon’s death, an Italian writer, Marina Vezzoli, invites Russell to recuperate at her villa in Tuscany. But what at first seems like a generous invitation slowly reveals itself to be a calculated offer. As Russell’s stay in Italy lengthens, he begins to realize that the people in his life are using or manipulating him, most of all the poet’s New York publishers who, against the dying man’s wishes, are trying to acquire his unfinished manuscript. Looming over everything is the long and fascinating legacy of Villa Guidi, where during Word War II a Jewish family hid in the subterranean floors, later undergoing a conversion to Catholicism. In an echo of this dramatic history, Russell is forced to undergo a conversion of his own in order to find redemption and meaning in his life.]

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Olshan's crisp, satisfying new novel follows American translator and author Russell Todaro, a Jewish gay man who becomes embroiled in the death and ensuing scandal of a former lover. While in France with Ed, a well-known Parisian poet, they are attacked in their hotel room by two armed men. The men mysteriously flee when Ed confronts them; then Ed dies of a heart attack the following morning. Marina, an aging literary acquaintance of Ed's, provides a haven for Russell at Villa Guidi, her picturesque and history-laden Tuscan villa. Marina frets that the men who assaulted Russell in Paris may have been looking for her reclusive husband, Stefano, a controversial, outspoken media writer. Meanwhile, Annie, the executrix of Ed's literary estate, demands to know the whereabouts of the autobiographical manuscript he'd spent the last 10 years penning. Russell denies he has it, though escalating momentum and melodrama converge in the novel's denouement when Ed's writings re-emerge and the lines of truth become blurred. Set against a plush and evocatively described European backdrop, Olshan has produced a compelling story of forbidden desire, deception, religion and love's intoxicating allure. (Apr.)
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Review

“Beautiful, bittersweet…This fervent story of love and loss, of the perils and pleasures of intimacy, is depicted with a sure, light touch and with universal resonance and appeal.” New York Times Book Review on Nightswimmer

“Olshan writes prose that sings.” Los Angeles Times Book Review on A Warmer Season

“A beautifully written story of love, betrayal and loss. People Magazine on Nightswimmer

“…a finely written and compassionate book. Its quality is immediately apparent….a novel characterized by poetic instinct rather than documentary panache.” The Sunday Times (London) on The Waterline

“Authentically moving.” – Newsweek on A Warmer Season

“Extraordinarily mature….Here is a writer in total command of his narrative.”  -- Ian McEwan on Clara’s Heart

"Olshan's novels are novels of great obsessions, of transcendent moments of perfect love set against a backdrop of hovering betrayal and death.” -- The Guardian (London) on Vanitas

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1 edition (April 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312373910
• ISBN-13: 978-0312373917
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,503,234 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joseph Olshan is the award-winning author of nine novels. His broad-ranging subjects vary from the wise, tough-minded, hilarious Clara Mayfield who became the model of the film character based on his novel, Clara's Heart, to an aristocratic, politically savvy Italian novelist who lives in a villa in Tuscany (The Conversion). His forthcoming novel, Cloudland (St. Martin's April 2012) is based on a true crime story: the serial murders of 6 women that occurred in the Connecticut River valley of Vermont and New Hampshire, crimes that were never solved. His writing has been translated into sixteen languages. He lives between Vermont and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A comfortable read, April 26, 2008

By 

Thomas Janowski "tomj1963" (Rochester, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Conversion (Hardcover)

Saturday, April 25, 2008. I read The Conversion cover to cover today. While I read it entirely in one sitting, I didn't do that because it was so suspenseful that I couldn't put it down. Instead I found Olshan's latest to be a very comfortable read.

It is hard for me to describe, but somehow reading The Conversion was like reading one of my travel journals from 10 years ago. Familiar, but with enough time and distance had passed so that details of the events seemed new. Because the characters and story seemed familiar, this was an easy and very comfortable book to read.

Though many of the story's elements are anything but comfortable--the hotel invasion at gun/knife point and the entire topic of sero-converting--the characters handle these situations like people I know would handle them. I found myself bringing my life into the reading of this book as much as this book brought new topics and details to my life.

While there were dramatic situations in The Conversion, the overall feeling of the book is one of a subtle, yet nagging, mystery that winds through all the character's lives.

It always amazes me when a book can make me feel this involved and this comfortable with new characters that instantly feel familiar.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A literary self-reflection that entangles on itself, May 26, 2008

By 

Jon Gilliam "jcg" (Glenside, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Conversion (Hardcover)

Let me start off by saying that this book is written in a more literary style, and I don't intend that to denigrate, particularly because of the book's self-reflective quality. At one point, the main character Russell (who is a one-time-published author) remarks on another character's (also an author) work's accessibility (he had feared it would be written in an overly literary style), and I wondered if the author was expressing his own concerns about the novel, right there within it, out of the mouth of the main character. Speaking of the main character, I found he treads just on the border of likability - he comes across as a defeatist in search of a happiness that he will never let himself have, buffering his ego with affairs with married men and delaying his own realization as an author by his own infatuation with the obfuscation of his own skills by his obsession with the literary world society and the gentrified world of the American seeking some sort of entry into a class they can never truly belong to by immersing themselves in European culture and language. The main character's one relationship with another man who is truly available to him is more about his own relationship with how he perceives his own credibility, as an author, and just adds to his gloomy introspectiveness. The real relationship in the book is between the main character and an Italian woman, Marina (you guessed it, also an author although a wealthy and established one), whose villa Russell is recovering in after an unusual (and somewhat unbelievable) turn of events. Marina is actually for me the best developed and most likable character in the book, and she's the pivot point around which Russell's self-conception evolves. It's really the only genuine relationship Russell has. The book is very well written, and it is accessible despite the "literary" prose, but at the end of the novel I felt that some of Russell's "progress" was just a veneer. Maybe that was what the book was trying to accomplish, was to show that although he had changed during the experiences he was having, that in the end he can't escape his own nature. Still, I was left feeling a little cheated at the end, as if I deserved something more revealing, something that would have left Russell as more empathetic, more a person with something to say to me, not just to himself. In the end, I don't think Russell really sees a way to move on from his own selfishness, just a way to develop it in a different direction.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poor Ending, July 5, 2008

By 

CBC "CBC" (New Orleans, LA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Conversion (Hardcover)

While THE CONVERSION is, at times, beautifully rendered, rarely have I completed a book and felt such a sense of disappointment. Perhaps this was because the evocative, fast-moving--and, yes, sexy--opening 75 pages made me feel I was in for something special, and yet the ending dawdled, looped back onto itself, and finally dwindled into mere nothingness. Loose ends were not tied up. (Who were the intruders? Were they hired assassins? Who threw the rock? Who received the insurance $$$? Why couldn't/didn't Russell find SOME SORT of substantive love?) While I had a sense that a "conversion" was taking place within Russell, at end I simply couldn't tell you just what this was. It was far too subtle, if it occurred at all. Frankly, he seemed much the same as he did at the book's inception. And even on the final page the reader is given a new twist regarding the book's European publication that seems to solve nothing and, frankly, just made no sense to me. THE CONVERSION is like a fast-burning firecracker: startling bright and beautiful at the beginning, at end one is left with the charred remains of only what could have been...