Together, Closer

Giovanni Frazzetto was born and grew up in the southeast of Sicily. He studied science at University College London and received a Ph.D. from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. Author of Joy, Guilt, Anger, Love, Frazzetto is a research fellow at Trinity College Dublin.

[Frazzetto] uses psychology, neurology and biological information to explore the ways in which intimacy manifests in different types of relationships. He recounts the stories of eight relationships, from romantic such as Ryan and Vanessa, who have been having an affair for years to the familial or personal. Oscar, for instance, must contend with what it means to be close to death, while Anita invents a fake boyfriend to help her cope with her loneliness. Each story puts intimacy and how we experience it on display.
Concepción De León, The New York Times

Together, Closer examines the way humans relate to each other across a spectrum of relationships from parent-child to platonic friendships and, of course, romantic love. . . .  The reader reads the stories of others lives but, of course, we are really appraising our own. Every now and then and where this happens will depend on your intimate style the text seems to silver into a kind of mirror. It is unnervingly accurate the way this works, and triggers an interior scrutiny. In these characters, Frazzetto is really showing us ourselves, helping us to look at what we usually look away from.
The Guardian
 
An ambitious project . . . Giovanni Frazzetto marries science with art, the most recent discoveries of neuroscience with human stories about intimacy. . . . A clear love of art and science shines from the book.
The Irish Times

[Frazzetto] ponders what intimacy really is, what it means, and how it shifts and changes throughout a person's lifetime. . . . Regardless of whether they are heterosexual or homosexual relationships, or between a parent and child, each tender story shows a different aspect of intimacy, including the passion one first might ascribe to the word intimate. . . .  The author leaves the door open for readers to make their own comparisons and conclusions. Science and anecdote intertwine in this close examination of the bonds that bind humans