Florenzer

"Florenzer focuses on a young Leonardo da Vinci as he comes to terms with his talent and what we would today call his queerness, in a way that never seems ahistorical or overdetermined, like it’s forcing modern sensibilities and perspectives onto a very unmodern world. Instead, Phil Melanson has taken great pains to capture the place and time with a bracing clarity and immediacy – not only the internecine politics of the Medicis and the papacy, but the physicality of Florence, Italy, itself. I love the vividness of Melanson’s prose, which captures the sights, sounds and smells so well you feel like you’re walking the streets of the city alongside his characters."