
Genre:
Women's Fiction
Themes:
Against All Odds
Age Gap
Coming of Age
Divorce
Love At First Sight
Love Triangle
Low Angst
Religion
Slow Burn
Taboo / Forbidden Relationship
Vacation / Travel
Heat Level:
Medium (sex scenes are included and may use mildly graphic description)
Archetypes:
Parent / Caregiver
Teacher / Professor
Writer/ Author
Geographic Location:
Continental Europe
Setting:
Academic / School / University
Foreign Country
Small Town / Rural
Sexual / Gender Identity:
Lesbian
Tomboy
Questioning
The Intensive Course
By Anna Parsifal
How do you tell a friendly gesture from an intimate one?
While on vacation with her closeted girlfriend, Anna falls for another woman, her Italian teacher. They begin a confusingly intimate friendship.
One year later, Anna leaves behind the sociocultural limits of her homeland to find out once and for all if she can win the heart of the mysterious Italian beauty. She returns to Perugia for another intensive course: both in the Italian language and the exquisite agony of ambiguous female bonds.
An autobiographical novel in the tradition of Audre Lorde and Jeanette Winterson, The Intensive Course is a story of claiming self and desire amid multiple taboos. For those who came of age between Stonewall and Love is Love, for anyone learning to be themselves in a religious culture that wants to erase them, for anyone who has wondered what happens to love unfulfilled.