Gallo
Alexander Sammartino
Mar 2027 · Simon and Schuster
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infoThis book will become available on March 16, 2027. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this audiobook
From the award-winning author of Last Acts comes an elegant, hilarious redemption story in which our everyman hero, the aging professional bodybuilder Tom Gallo (the eleventh best bodybuilder in the world, he would clarify), plunges down a destructive path for a last shot at perfection.
"By page two, I teared up...There's a spiritual thread through the whole thing like a tractor beam. Unputdownable and unforgettable." —Mary Karr, New York Times bestselling author
"While many novelists are struggling to figure out how best to address the state of the nation—centerless, ridiculous, and terrifying, doomed yet trivial, dire yet unheroic—Sammartino seems to have cracked the code." —The New York Times Book Review
Veteran professional bodybuilder Tom Gallo still believes he can win it all. But his family disagrees. Yes: his wife, Lisa, and his sister, Debbie, have seen enough of his "art," and everyone is eager for the oft-injured, forty-something hustler to retire from the stage for good. But when a younger pro dies, Gallo gets the call to take his spot in the contest that will finally change his life—just not in the way he was hoping.
Gallo is an ode to the great literary portraits, in the tradition of Stoner and The Death of Ivan Illych. Set in the suburban desert of Phoenix, Arizona, this distinctly American novel—both heartbreaking and absurd—is about ambition, addiction, faith, family, and mortality, and it marks the latest achievement by an extraordinary new talent.
"By page two, I teared up...There's a spiritual thread through the whole thing like a tractor beam. Unputdownable and unforgettable." —Mary Karr, New York Times bestselling author
"While many novelists are struggling to figure out how best to address the state of the nation—centerless, ridiculous, and terrifying, doomed yet trivial, dire yet unheroic—Sammartino seems to have cracked the code." —The New York Times Book Review
Veteran professional bodybuilder Tom Gallo still believes he can win it all. But his family disagrees. Yes: his wife, Lisa, and his sister, Debbie, have seen enough of his "art," and everyone is eager for the oft-injured, forty-something hustler to retire from the stage for good. But when a younger pro dies, Gallo gets the call to take his spot in the contest that will finally change his life—just not in the way he was hoping.
Gallo is an ode to the great literary portraits, in the tradition of Stoner and The Death of Ivan Illych. Set in the suburban desert of Phoenix, Arizona, this distinctly American novel—both heartbreaking and absurd—is about ambition, addiction, faith, family, and mortality, and it marks the latest achievement by an extraordinary new talent.
From the award-winning author of Last Acts comes an elegant, hilarious redemption story in which our everyman hero, the aging professional bodybuilder Tom Gallo (the eleventh best bodybuilder in the world, he would clarify), plunges down a destructive path for a last shot at perfection.
"By page...
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About the author
Alexander Sammartino was born in Rhode Island and grew up in Arizona. His debut novel, Last Acts, won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, was chosen as a New York Times Editors' Choice and National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, and was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. He received his MFA from Syracuse University, and he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and cat. He is the 2026–2027 Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center.
Alexander Sammartino was born in Rhode Island and grew up in Arizona. His debut novel, Last Acts, won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, was chosen as a New York Times Editors' Choice and National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, and was shortlisted for the Bollinger Ever...
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