A review by alisonjfields
Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri

5.0

Yes. Beautiful. Profound. Sublime. A rare look inside the mind of the author of one of the Greatest Hits Of All Time. But I'd feel bad if I didn't extend this likely tasteless pop cultural metaphor and tell you that "La Vita Nuova" is sort of the Early Italian Renaissance version of VH1's "Storytellers." Rich with self-aggrandizement, detailed in its recounting of how one man needlessly complicated his writing and romantic life by picking surrogates to his surrogate inamorata because his actual inamorata was the textbook definition of unavailable and stinking slightly of what the more polite among us refer to as poetic license, "La Vita Nuova" might be the most unintentionally hilarious book about writing I've ever read from the man who sent pretty much everyone he ever know to hell. And still better than "Paradiso," to boot!