The Monosexual, a novel by Dean Monti. The cover is on a beige, worn looking background with red lettering for the title and author name and blue lettering for a novel. A pattern of red, pink, and blue blobs in the center is meant to represent sushi.
Screen capture of Clint Travis' Bookshelf on Midwest Book Review. The information is repeated on this page so no need to put it all in this alt tag
Author Dean Monti at his book launch for THE MONOSEXUAL, in Glen Ellen, Illinois
Author Dean Monti at his book launch for THE MONOSEXUAL, in Glen Ellen, Illinois
Author Dean Monti at his book launch for THE MONOSEXUAL, in Glen Ellen, Illinois
Author Dean Monti at his book launch for THE MONOSEXUAL, in Glen Ellen, Illinois
Author Dean Monti at his book launch for THE MONOSEXUAL, in Glen Ellen, Illinois
Author Dean Monti at his book launch for THE MONOSEXUAL, in Glen Ellen, Illinois

The Monosexual

(1 customer review)

The Monosexual

a novel by Dean Monti
ISBN: 978-1-956440-89-8 paperback $20.95
ISBN: 978-1-956440-90-4 ebook $9.99
222 pp.

July 16, 2024

A comic take on obsession and the painful process of
romantic recovery.—Kirkus Reviews

The Monosexual tells the story of Vincent Cappellini, an obsessed ultra-monogamist who struggles when his relationship with the love of his life abruptly ends. Twice-burned—once in love and once by the sun—he faces a host of challenges to his self-appointed sense of identity. Sunburn, bad sushi, a Sinatra karaoke contest, and the road rage fury of a woman scorned are but a few of the trials Vincent will endure while facing the ultimate test to his monosexuality—a new woman in his life.

 

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Description

The Monosexual, a novel by Dean Monti. The cover is on a beige, worn looking background with red lettering for the title and author name and blue lettering for a novel. A pattern of red, pink, and blue blobs in the center is meant to represent sushi.The Monosexual

a novel by Dean Monti
ISBN: 978-1-956440-89-8 paperback $20.95
ISBN: 978-1-956440-90-4 ebook $9.99
222 pp.

July 16, 2024

A comic take on obsession and the painful process
of romantic recovery.—Kirkus Reviews

The Monosexual tells the story of Vincent Cappellini, an obsessed ultra-monogamist who struggles when his relationship with the love of his life abruptly ends. Twice-burned—once in love and once by the sun—he faces a host of challenges to his self-appointed sense of identity. Sunburn, bad sushi, a Sinatra karaoke contest, and the road rage fury of a woman scorned are but a few of the trials Vincent will endure while facing the ultimate test to his monosexuality—a new woman in his life.

What readers are saying about Dean Monti’s The Monosexual:

Kirkus Reviews says: THE MONOSEXUAL by Dean Monti ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 16, 2024 A comic take on obsession and the painful process of romantic recovery. In Monti’s comic novel, a hapless medical reporter attends a conference in the hopes of winning back the love of his life. It’s 1999, and seasoned journalist Vincent Cappelini has been hired to cover a dermatologists’ conference for the Giornale della Faccia, Italy’s premier dermatology journal. It’s an easy gig, interviewing sunscreen-slathered skin doctors around a hotel pool, but Vincent’s real interest lies in the fact that the conference is being held in San Caliente, California, the seaside town where Melissa Taylor, his ex-girlfriend who left him 13 months ago, now resides. Vincent’s ongoing preoccupation with Melissa is about more than unrequited feelings. He considers himself monosexual, a term of his own coinage that combines the characteristics of demisexuality and monomania. Monosexuality is Vincent’s “self-appointed, glittering, gold badge of honor. A rare, eclectic, yet-to-be-discovered phenomenon that makes him special, makes Melissa special. Makes being with Melissa extra special.” He arrives at San Caliente’s El Famous hotel, quickly falls asleep by the pool, and suffers a horrible sunburn. The conference only goes downhill from there: Vincent gets food poisoning from off-menu fugu (pufferfish), runs into his least favorite former co-worker, and reignites the passions of an unstable pig-skin researcher, whose past advances led to Vincent’s termination from a previous job. Most troubling of all is the tempting presence of Paige, a hotel employee whom Vincent might even find attractive, despite her not being Melissa: “She’s definitely someone who would have given Vincent pause—before Melissa,” Monti writes. “It’s a first impression….But like auras, Vincent puts a lot of stock into his first impressions.” Madcap happenings, including a Frank Sinatra–themed karaoke competition, lead Vincent to finally confront the horrible truth at the center of his monosexuality, once and for all. Monti displays a cartoonish humor that keeps his protagonist’s disturbing obsession from darkening the novel’s tone. For example, everything on the hotel’s “presidential floor” is uncomfortably undersized as an homage to five-foot-four James Madison. Vincent calls the hotel’s front desk to complain about the Madison suite he’s been booked into and asks if there’s a Lincoln suite he might take instead (since Lincoln, was, of course, quite tall); the voice on the line replies, “There’s no Lincoln Room on the presidential floor. The Lincoln room is on the Luxury Car level….There’s also a Lincoln room on the New York Tunnel Floor. That’s the sixth floor. Lincoln, Holland, and Queens Midtown…all very nice rooms. Long rooms.” The book vacillates between using the neurotic Vincent as the locus of its humor and satirizing the world around him, which has the effect of capturing the peculiar alienation of heartache: Sometimes Vincent seems to be the lone sane man in a delusional world, and at other times, he appears to be the lone delusional man in a sane one. This is a poolside read that has more beneath its surface than initially appears, and it offers readers an often funny and always engaging look at how, sometimes, people need to be pulled through the healing process—even when they don’t think they’re ready to move on. A comic take on obsession and the painful process of romantic recovery.

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Screen capture of Clint Travis' Bookshelf on Midwest Book Review. The information is repeated on this page so no need to put it all in this alt tag
click screen capture to read full review.

“The Monosexual is a funny, fast-paced, and engaging novel. The characters and the premise are zany and witty.”—Dana Spiotta, author of Wayward, and Innocents and Others

“Vincent’s need to pathologize his own lost love with a self-diagnosis involving a made-up clinical term—thus both legitimizing his plight and making it as wholly his own as if it had never happened to any other guy before—strikes a nice 21st-century note and makes The Monosexual seem wittily suited to its times.”—Jonathan Dee, author of A Thousand Pardons and The Privileges

What is the nature of love? Monti asks

Sceen capture shows blurred out detail of Dean's book cover with white lettering over top. See caption.
Click Screen Capture to read Heavy Feather’s Fiction Review from September 6, 2024: “The Retro Allure of Dean Monti’s ‘The Monosexual'” by Ellen Birkett Morris

Author Dean Monti. Dean wears a white shirt and black jacket. His collar is open. His gray and white hair and beard are trimmed short, and he looks straight at the camera through a pair of glasses with blue inner frames. Behind him is a gray brick wall.

 

 

Dean Monti started writing at age two, but nothing legible until age five. Since then, his fiction has appeared in several literary journals in print and online. His critically-acclaimed novel, The Sweep of the Second Hand, was published by Academy Chicago Publishers and reprinted in paperback by Penguin. In addition to other novels, he is the author of several full-length and one-act plays and has had works staged in Chicago and Norfolk, Virginia. His short story “Why Dogs Don’t Talk” was adapted as a stage play and short film. Additionally, Monti has also taught creative writing at Columbia College in Chicago and at College of DuPage. He lives in Glen Ellyn with his wife, Julie and two difficult but sometimes loveable cats.

What people said about Dean Monti’s The Sweep of the Second Hand:

“Consistently fresh and funny, with some scenes that are downright hilarious.”—The Wall Street Journal

“A deft page-turner… utterly captivating in its madness.”—The Baltimore Sun

“Monti begs comparison with Woody Allen and Nick Hornby.”—Library Journal

“Monti has a gift for laidback humor.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Entertaining… would make a nice romantic comedy starring John Cusack.”—Hartford Courant

 

 

Additional information

Weight 10 oz
Dimensions 8.5 × 5.5 × .88 in
Edition

Ebook, Paperback

1 review for The Monosexual

  1. kpdavis –

    We kind of love the absurdity of this story. Vincent is a deeply confused fellow with his invented condition, monosexuality. As a premise for a story about a guy who has lost his one true love, it complicates things deliciously right up front, but Monti keeps piling on the complications, and we couldn’t help laughing out loud as things go from bad to worse for poor Vincent.

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