Love
“You already fly, so why should I? You are my wings.”
In the heart of Manhattan, a starving artist survives by sketching strangers in Central Park — until one morning a woman in a power suit sits down and commands him: “Draw me.”
She’s rich, brilliant, and utterly unlike the world he knows. He’s drawn to her with an intensity that feels dangerous, and soon their connection blurs the line between art and reality.
What begins as a portrait turns into a relationship — one that spirals into dependence, desire, and coercive control.
“Graziano writes this with a kind of restraint that trusts the reader to notice what’s happening beneath the surface.” –Goodreads reviewers
“a quiet, controlled kind of psychological tension that lingers longer than something more overt ever could.” –Goodreads reviewers
“Love unsettled me in a way I didn’t expect.” –Goodreads reviewers
“That line, ‘You are my wings,’ stayed with me, not as something romantic, but as something deeply consuming.” –Goodreads reviewers
“an interesting take on the line between love and obsession.” –Goodreads reviewers
“A Dante/Beckett reduction of human struggle to its lowest common denominator.”—Michael Mirolla, author of The Formal Logic of Emotion and Berlin
“One of the most original and thought-provoking stories I have ever read…true literary art…Not a word is wasted in this masterpiece. Yes, I call it that. I have read many classics, and I can tell you that The Divine Farce should be counted among them; the finest in American literature.”—Geekscribe
“Imaginative, intelligent narrative. Twin ideas of forgiveness and mercy twist through this strange, moving, patiently wrought novel.”—Publishers Weekly
“Fabulously imagined, seriously considered, and very funny. A kind of fairytale antithesis on the meaning of existence. . . . Fantastic.”—Spirituality and Health Books
“Strange but wonderful . . . like nothing I’ve read before. A very short book, but the scope is epic in detail. . . . I enjoyed the heck out of this book.”—Geekscribe
“Should be required reading in the writing grad schools. . . . There’s nary a word wasted. What’s left is comedy, retrospection, betrayal, tenderness, meditations on loneliness, a love story that survives all attempts to suppress it . . . not bad within 149 pages.”—Barnstable Patriot
Michael S. A. Graziano, PhD, is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Princeton University. Love is his latest work of fiction published by Leapfrog. Others include The Love Song of Monkey, The Divine Farce, and Death My Own Way. He has also published popular science books including God Soul Mind Brain (Leapfrog Press, 2010), Consciousness and the Social Brain (Oxford University Press, 2013), Rethinking Consciousness (W. W. Norton, 2021), which was a finalist for the Penn-Faulkner award, and most recently, Charlie’s Lab (Press 53, 2023). He has regularly written for the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife and a backyard fox family.
