On the surface, this book appears to start as a memoir of sorts by a man nearing 40 and getting a head start on his midlife crisis. By the time it ends, however, and you realize that the women of the title are not merely his conquests but ones who have formed him, the man has laid himself bare in ways that feel cliched at certain points, but also surprising and insightful at others. Marcello, the narrator, a book editor and poet aspiring to find a place among Italy's literati, is writing about the women he loves, and he inserts notes and asides throughout the manuscript explaining his choices as a writer. The "meta" nature of this set up feels self-involved or self-obsessed at first, but eventually arrives at  introspection and self-awareness that—at least for this reader—feels rare in novels by men about men. 

Given its topicality, this is an ambitious work. At a time when the world is growing ever more aware of the effects of toxic masculinity at an interpersonal as well as a societal level (and not just on women but on men as well), Pacifico takes on not just the minefields of marriage, extra-marital affairs and family, but also the delicate relationship of writer and subject and what men are capable of doing to women when they write about them. I didn't love this novel, but it managed to engender my compassion, which as Marcello discovers, is entirely the point.