Separate Rooms by Pier Vittorio Tondelli is an engaging story that explores the complexities of youth, queer identity, and relationships. I appreciated the depth of the characters and the raw, emotional journey they undertake. However, the novel’s structure left me feeling a bit disconnected. It often reads like a long stream of consciousness, with frequent time jumps, making it difficult to follow at times. While I enjoyed the themes and the story itself, the format didn’t resonate with me as much as I had hoped.

This was tough for me to get into and I don’t feel like I was necessarily in the mind set to be reading this to be honest. I was hoping for a plot, but it’s more of a philosophical dive into life, death, and identity. The characters’ introspections and reflections on existence took the front seat, leaving me wanting more action.

Separate Rooms by Pier Vittorio Tondelli is set to be published by Sceptre Books/Hodder and Stoughton on 24th April 2025. Initially published in Italy in 1989, two years before Tondelli’s death, this edition is translated from the Italian by Simon Pleasance.

Told in three movements, Separate Rooms follows Leo, an Italian writer coping with the death of his partner Thomas, a German musician. Melancholy and nostalgic, the story follows Leo's recounting of memories of his time with Thomas as he travels from place to place, trying to escape his feelings.

Although told from Leo's perspective, it quickly becomes clear that this is just as much Thomas’ story (if not moreso) as we begin to see just how important Thomas is to Leo.

As Leo recounts these memories to himself, a picture quickly builds up of the relationship between the two men, especially in the context of the time and public attitudes towards queer people. One thing that really struck me was how out of sequence and almost randomly the memories come to Leo, but this just makes it feel all the more realistic. It is at times hard to keep up with where in the story's timeline each anecdote takes place, and what is happening in the present, but Tondelli is generally very successful with this.

A lot of the language is clearly of the time it was written, and I can't imagine it being used today, however it is unclear if this is down to Tondelli or the translator’s interpretation of the Italian. This is more forgivable when it comes to Leo's attitudes towards others in the story. He is at times thoroughly unlikeable and I couldn't help but feel that Thomas deserved better, in death, as well as after and before it. In fact, the further into the story I read, the less sympathetic I felt towards Leo.

The second of the three movements, Leo's World, is the longest and, to me, the weakest. It meanders and confuses and often comes across as jarring. Despite this, the final sections before the movement's end (the sections with Leo frequenting the Blue Boy club and the old man on the plane) are some of the strongest in the entirety of the novel.

I have to say that I left this book feeling confused (not necessarily in a bad way), and I definitely get the impression that it is one I will be thinking over again and again long after I finished it.

Alt text/image description: Overlapping pink-hued images of a young, attractive man with curly dark hair on a sky blue background are bordered by yellow boxes bearing the book’s title

The description made Separate Rooms sound like it would be perfect for me, but I’m afraid the narrative just didn’t gel. Really struggled to get going, so set aside until I was over a cold in case I wasn't giving it the time it needed. On the second attempt I found it a slightly more interesting exercise in terms of treating it as a historical perspective on being gay in a different era, but I still found it rather cold, and not the beautiful and lyrical novel the pull quotes suggested. I did enjoy the reminiscences of various european cities as a kind of depressed sex travelogue, but not so much that it saved the book for me.

Separate Rooms by Pier Vittorio Tondelli and translated by Simon Pleasance is a beautifully introspective novel about love, loss, and identity. The story follows Leo, a writer mourning the death of his lover Thomas, as he travels through Europe, reflecting on their relationship and his own sense of self. Tondelli’s prose is poetic and deeply emotional, capturing the complexities of grief and memory. It’s a quiet, meditative journey that resonates with anyone who has loved and lost. A powerful exploration of intimacy and solitude, Separate Rooms is both haunting and profoundly human.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers Hodder & Stoughton for the opportunity to read this e-ARC.

Originally published in 1989, Separate Rooms was the final novel by Italian author Pier Vittorio Tondelli, released just two years before his passing from AIDS.

Now, it is being published in the UK on April 24th, featuring an introduction by André Aciman, the bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name.

Separate Rooms follows Leo, an Italian writer who, at the beginning of the novel, loses his former boyfriend, Thomas, a German musician to AIDS. Unable to watch Thomas slowly die, Leo embarks on a journey across Europe and then to America in an attempt to hide, almost running away from the hardships of adulthood, to rediscover himself.

Throughout this process of self-discovery, grief, and loss, he reflects on their relationship. He recalls their first encounter, his desire to live separately whilst still together (separate rooms), and reflects on his own behavior—not only in this relationship but in a previous one. He revisits memories of his childhood, family dynamics, friendships, and his relationship with God and religion. Most importantly, he contemplates his deep need for solitude. The novel is structured in three movements through his introspective journey.

However, the time jumps can be confusing. I’m unsure whether this was due to the formatting of the e-ARC or if it’s an aspect of the author's narrative, but it occasionally made me disorientated. The pacing, particularly in the second movement, felt slow and dragged at times. I found that I was struggling and had to push myself, which is why I couldn’t give it a full five stars. Fortunately, the pacing picked up, again, in the third movement.

This was a beautifully written novel about self-reflection, grief, and finding oneself after loss. Leo is flawed—at times even toxic, if I might say —but there is no denying the love he had for Thomas.
Tondelli’s writing is melancholic, and it deeply moved me. There are parta that are intense, immersing us fully into Leo's thoughts and emotions.

At its core, Separate Rooms is a story about love and its complexities—how easy it is to hurt the ones we love and how love alone isn’t always enough if two people see relationships differently. Leo’s journey feels like a late coming-of-age story, as he struggles with self-acceptance in his 30s while reflecting on all he has left behind.
There is so much to analyze and discuss in this novel, from its themes of love, solitude, grief, loss, self-acceptance, self-reflection, awareness, and the portrayal of queer love and identity during a difficult era.

I think it's amazing how Tondelli was able to capture and write the complexities and struggles of being gay in the 1980s. Some passages deeply touch me, such as:
"Now he had to give serious thought to the notion of living together with another man. But he had no models to follow, no experience to recycle and fall back on in this stage of their relationship. He knew that the love he still felt for Thomas would not be enough on its own. (...) Living together meant believing in values that neither of them was capable of recognising. How would their love end? Would they have no option but to normalise a relationship that society was, in fact, incapable of accepting as something normal?"

It seems that Separate Rooms is being adapted into a film. While I’m usually not a fan of book-to-film adaptations, I’m curious to see how they bring this story to life.

I just couldn't get into this. I didn't like the writing style and found myself skim reading to just get through it. It felt like everything happened too fast and that nothing happened at all