[small light stain on top edge of text block, slight fading to edges of boards; jacket lightly rubbed, small v-shaped pull-tear on rear panel, vertical crease in rear flap]. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the ffep: "To ___ & / ____ -- / with much love -- / Nick / Oct 1981." Novel about "the half-Italian, half-Irish, half-Catholic, half-Jewis child of dead circus acrobats," who first finds himself living Paris in the custody of an eccentric, boisterous, alcoholic uncle "who introduces his little nephew to the finer things -- sporting houses in Pigalle, jazz concerts in Montmartre, sex by the railroad tracks," etc., then re-homed after a custody battle with "a more respectable aunt and uncle in Chicago," where he strives "to get through his 'addled essence' in the grey-flannel fifties of mid-Eisenhower America." Signed by Author