A Pleasant Fiction: A Novelistic Memoir

Is this all there is?

Calvin McShane has lost everyone who made him who he is. As he prepares his parents' home for sale after their deaths, he navigates the rooms of his childhood one last time—sorting through his family's belongings, unearthing long-buried memories, and reckoning with the weight of what was said, what was left unsaid, and what was never truly heard.

Set in the quiet spaces between loss and remembrance, A Pleasant Fiction is an immersive and unflinchingly honest novelistic memoir, blending lived experience with literary storytelling. With raw vulnerability and emotional depth, Calvin revisits his past—his complicated family, his long-abandoned musical ambitions, and the friendships that shaped him—searching for meaning in what remains.

A deeply personal and profoundly emotional meditation on grief, love, loss, and identity, A Pleasant Fiction explores the bittersweet reality of memory and the struggle to move forward without leaving the past behind.

The follow-up to De Lucia’s debut novel, The Wake of Expectations, A Pleasant Fiction revisits its central characters a quarter-century later, revealing how time, loss, and perspective can reshape even our most intimate truths.