Monday Afternoon

Monday Afternoon is the story of Angelo Aiello, dissatisfied husband of Alice, loving father of Sophia, troubled Italian Roman Catholic and committed New Yorker who, after fifteen years of a grindingly deteriorating marriage, accidentally meets his exact match in the Stamford Nature Center in Connecticut (the state which appropriately describes itself as being 'full of surprises').The woman he meets, Monica Richardson, is in her thirties, beautiful, smart, playful, vulnerable and, above all, a fellow English teacher with a relish for all things literary and deconstructionist. Whereas Alice, Angelo's wife, despises his writing, Monica adores it; whereas Alice spurns Angelo's intellectualising of his dreams, Monica pitches in alongside him even before her first cup of coffee (but not before their first love-making).But what about Angelo's daughter, Sophia? What about Angelo's parents? What about Angelo's mother-in-law to whom he has made a devout promise? What about Alice who has already had a nervous breakdown when her sister died of AIDS?This is therefore the story of a love affair, of an adultery, of a sudden opportunity for both salvation and damnation, of a man torn between a future ideal and a historic reality.And the writing is so intense, it is a coup de foudre for us all.