American Adulterer - Softcover

"Remarkable new novel about the president... The man's wit, courtesy, peacemaking vision and cool judgement are all here, vividly re-created, as well as courage in the face of near disabling infirmity and pain... gripping and thoughtful."-- Hugo Barnacle, "The Sunday Times""American Adulterer is a novel of our times: shameless and prurient, detached and salacious."-- Sean O'Hagan, "The Observer""Compelling... With its glacially elegant prose, Mercurio's narrative keeps its distance from the subject."-- Adrian Turpin, "Financial Times"

In his study of John F. Kennedy's womanizing, Mercurio never demonizes his subject, instead offering a sympathetic portrait of a virtuous man in the grip of an uncontrollable vice. From its opening line, explores the life of a habitual womanizer in hypnotically clinical prose. The subject regards his high libido as normal, yet this particular philanderer must go to extraordinary lengths to conceal his affairs from his wife and his political rivals -- and with good reason, since he is the President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Here are Kennedy's affairs with Marilyn Monroe, mob moll Judith Campbell, libertine Mary Meyer, and his flings with numerous White House staff. Each affair propels Kennedy into increasingly murky waters. He fears losing his wife and children to whom he's devoted, and the office to which he's dedicated. Through its study of an important figure, American Adulterer poses controversial questions about society's evolving fixation on the private lives of public officials.