Nymph
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 2 June 2026
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Ten-year-old Leo spends her mornings tidying the rooms of her nonna’s time-worn Italian hotel, quietly accumulating the junk and treasures left behind by guests—a pearl earring, a lock of hair. Her nights are suffused with her father’s liquor-spun tales of his childhood, mingled with stories of Greek heroes of old.
Years later, over another hot, endless Italian summer, the hotel is one of the only things in Leo’s life that has remained constant. An accident has knocked her family sideways; her brother Max is distant, and Nonna has grown frail. But then she meets Dolores, a young American woman who sets something alight in Leo that she didn’t know existed.
Heat-soaked, sensual and steeped in an exquisite longing, Nymph traverses the extraordinary pains, soaring pleasures and many metamorphoses it takes to finally grow up.
PRAISE:
'Polished, economic, swift, smart, spiritual...a transcendent work of intelligence.' Heidi Julavits, author of Directions to Myself
'Montrone’s lyrical prose is masterfully precise. Nymph is a dazzling debut that captures the dizzying intensity of first love.' Adam Wilson, author of Sensation Machines
'This shimmering gem of a novel invites you to re-experience that gut-punch feeling of youthful summer romance...Nymph is a truly impressive debut.' Anelise Chen, author of Clam Down
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Montrone's beautiful debut chronicles a contemporary American girl's coming-of-age over the course of two consequential summers at her maternal grandmother's agriturismo in Italy. Ten-year-old Leonora, who goes by Leo, spends long days in the pool, but is happiest when her father, a gregarious and volatile Brooklyn-born humanities professor, regales her with his versions of Homer's epics. After her grandmother puts her to work cleaning guests' rooms, she develops a habit of pocketing jewelry and other items, and she likens herself to Odysseus "dripping in the spoils of her clever intrusions." Trouble lies beneath the surface of the lush setting and Leo's childhood wonder, as Montrone hints when Leo's father drunkenly smashes a glass, cutting himself. The novel's flawless first part ends with a tragic turn. The second and final part finds Leo, now 18, back cleaning rooms and falling in love with new coworker Dolores, an American woman about her age. There's little tension beyond Leo and Dolores's will-they-or-won't-they, but Montrone vividly harnesses the ache of first love and the youthful yearning for self-understanding, which, for the poetic-minded Leo, is as much tied to death and fate as it is to sexual desire. This will stay with readers.
