Press Release:
Join Chaucer’s Books on Monday, May 21st at 7pm for a momentous evening with Emmy-winner Michael Imperioli as he signs his debut novel, The Perfume Burned His Eyes!
The Perfume Burned His Eyes is about Matthew, a sixteen-year-old boy living in Jackson Heights, Queens in 1976. After he loses his two most important male role models, his mother uproots Matthew and herself and moves to a posh apartment in Manhattan. It’s a new world for Matthew, who is enrolled in a private school where he meets and falls for the inscrutable Veronica, a loner who claims to be a witch. She is not the only one with whom he is smitten, however, for he soon meets the celebrated musician Lou Reed, who lives with his transgender girlfriend Rachel in the same building. Matthew is soon a fixture in his apartment, running errands and accompanying Reed on adventures. It is Reed who commands center stage; drug-addled and solipsistic, he is a combination musical genius and offbeat father figure to Matt, who, now 18, tells his first-person story in retrospect.
Michael Imperioli is best known for his starring role as Christopher Moltisanti in the acclaimed TV series The Sopranos, which earned him a Best Supporting Actor Emmy Award. He also wrote five episodes of the show and was co-screenwriter of the film Summer of Sam, directed by Spike Lee. Imperioli has appeared in six of Lee’s films and has also acted in films by Martin Scorsese, Abel Ferrara, Walter Hill, Peter Jackson, and the Hughes Brothers.
Chaucer’s Books
3321 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93105
(805) 682-6787
