Fantasies of the Body

David Plante grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, within a French-Canadian parish palisaded by its language, a dialect that dates back to the first French colonists, in the early seventeenth century, in La Nouvelle France—or what was then most of North America. His background is very similar to that of Jack Kerouac. Plante has been inspired to write novels rooted in La Nouvelle France, most notably in The Family, which was nominated for the National Book Award. He has recently published two memoirs Worlds Apart and Becoming a Londoner. His renowned Difficult Women, a nonfiction work that profiles Jean Rhys, Sonia Orwell, and Germaine Greer, was reissued by New York Review Books in 2017. Plante has dual nationality, American and British, and resides in Lucca, Italy.

"Plante’s novel beautifully explores unquenchable and bittersweet queer desire, and a uniquely felt “passion for a world that was a world of men.” It’s a gem.”—Publishers WeeklyPraise for David PlanteAmerican Stranger (2018)“This emotionally gripping and mystery-swathed novel will keep you entranced, uncertain and feel compelled to read on. We may all be strangers ultimately, and Plante nails that vision in his beautiful, often lyrical prose.” — Providence Journal“Plante’s exquisitely sensitive novel of displacement, isolation, loss, and longing is rendered in intimate, darkly enrapturing scenes of snow, haunted rooms, and desolate wanderings.” —Booklist“Plante’s new novel, while modern in setting, seems to exist in a timeless parallel universe. A questing new work from an accomplished writer – elegant, cerebral.” —Kirkus Reviews“Plante manages to capture the sense of disconnectedness . . . in this riveting novel of wandering souls.” —Library Journal“American Stranger is a beautiful novel, profound and subtle, on the rootlessness of people in worlds foreign to them and their search for self, or what remains of them in that search…incantatory.” — Le Monde“The novel bathes in a strange light, like an aquarium whose water is scandalously clear. It is modern, fast, painful, reminiscent of some small independent movies, stylish and smart movies like John Yates’1969 film John and Mary. The author has an uncanny ability to slip into the shoes of a woman, to know what she is thinking, what she feels.” — Le FigaroWorlds Apart, a memoir (2015)“Absorbing, illuminating and hugely entertaining . A vivid memorial to an entire era.” ― Times Literary Supplement“A window onto a changing world ... Powerful as a portrait of mutual love.”― Guardian“David Plante is the ideal diarist: he has a fascination with the famous, a relish for anecdote and gossip, an ability to capture people in a few words, and the essential self-awareness. The treat of the year.” ― Spectator Books of the Year“Sharply observant, drily witty diary.” ― The Times (London) Books of the YearBecoming a Londoner (2013)“Entries take on the languid feel of the floating world…A seamlessly charming narrative both evocative and sensual.”―Publishers Weekly“Love and life among literary lions . . . .[Plante is] a crafter of limpid prose, possessed of keen insight and sympathy. He also displays a rare gift for finely wrought characterization. . . . A richly detailed document of the London art scene of the '60s and an affecting memoir of the artist as a young man.” ―Kirkus Reviews“In this lapidary yet flowing volume, which runs from 1966 to 1986 and is charged with keen attentiveness and dazed astonishment, Plante meticulously records a perpetual carousel of luncheons, dinners, parties, and vacations punctuated by encounters with Bloomsbury artists Duncan Grant and Ben Nicholson, David Hockney, Edna O'Brien, Bruce Chatwin, and many others. Writing with supple exactitude, Plante sidesteps the diarist's usual habit of obsessive self-analysis to create a living history of this artistically dynamic time and place. And to think, this is just one small part of Plante's immense, half-century-spanning diary. More, please.” ―Donna Seaman Booklist“Always elegant, Plante's prose winds around and meanders…An engrossing look into the veteran writer's younger existence… He makes the perfect narrator to decades in flux, blithely commenting about drinking cider in one entry, and mentioning friends of friends were arrested for their homosexual behavior in the next…Becoming a Londoner isn't about transitions, it is about an evolution--from one thing to another, where there is no such thing as going back to older times, but rather starting currents and moving forward.” ―Daily News“In the hands of a true writer, a diary can be a miraculous thing… lyrical intelligence is ever on display… The London loved by any artist will inevitably be a fairytale for other, more jaundiced eyes. That is, after all, the magic of London--and the magic of Becoming a Londoner as well.” ―New York Journal of Books