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Book Reviewed by:As an Italian American family's decades-old secret begins to unravel, they will have to bear the consequences—and face each other—in this thrilling southern Brooklyn-set tragic opera of the highest caliber from crime fiction luminary William Boyle.
William Boyle is the master of Brooklyn-set crime fiction and Saint of the Narrows Street is his magnum opus. For fans of The Sopranos, Jonathan Lethem, and Dennis Lehane.
Gravesend, Brooklyn, 1986: Risa Franzone lives in a ground-floor apartment on Saint of the Narrows Street with her bad-seed husband, Saverio, and their eight-month-old baby, Fabrizio. On the night Risa's younger sister, Giulia, moves in to recover from a bad breakup, a fateful accident occurs: Risa, boiled over with anger and fear, strikes a drunk, erratic Sav with a cast-iron pan, killing him on the spot.
The sisters are left with a choice: notify the authorities and make a case for self-defense, or bury the man's body and go on with their lives as best they can. In a moment of panic, in the late hours of the night, they call upon Sav's childhood friend—the sweet, loyal Christopher "Chooch" Gardini—to help them, hoping they can trust him to carry a secret like this.
Over the vast expanse of the next eighteen years, life goes on in the working-class Italian neighborhood of Gravesend as Risa, Giulia, Chooch, and eventually Fabrizio grapple with what happened that night. A standout work of character-driven crime fiction from a celebrated author of the form, Saint of the Narrows Street is a searing and richly drawn novel about the choices we make and how they shape our lives.
1.
Risa's in the kitchen, crying into a gravy-stained dish towel as she heats up the remaining chicken cutlets on the stove in her cast-iron pan. Her hands are clammy. Sweat beads her hairline. Her purple T-shirt has dusky little circles on it from the popping oil.
Her sister, Giulia, is sitting at the dining room table, holding eight-month-old Fab.
At twenty-eight, a new mother, Risa feels old and worn out already. Giulia's four years younger than her, and she still seems so full of life, like the world can break her and she'll bounce back no problem. She's lithe, tan, looks chic in the acid-wash jeans and blue Oxford shirt she's wearing. Fab's squirming around, playing with the buttons on her shirt, blowing raspberries against her sleeve. Giulia's come over with her own heartbreak—having split with her latest boyfriend, Richie, moved out of their apartment, and shown up here with a suitcase and nowhere else to go—but she hasn't noticed yet that it's Risa who's in tears...
Boyle's crime thriller has the drama and pathos of a Greek tragedy as each section introduces another complication to the cover-up, with various people questioning Risa's version of that night and getting closer to the truth... William Boyle, a master of atmosphere, crafts a gritty world of tough-talkers, heavy-drinkers, and good folks just trying to make ends meet...continued
Full Review
(914 words)
(Reviewed by Pei Chen).
Megan Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of Beware the Woman
The stunning Saint of the Narrows Street is William Boyle's best novel yet, a vibrant, operatic tale of two resilient, big-hearted sisters and the fateful night that sets their life on a path they never intended. Not since Richard Price has a writer brought New York to such vivid, spectacular life, and Boyle's southern Brooklyn is all his own: a neighborhood pulsing with hard-earned humor, dive-bar pleasures and thunderous heartbreak. S.A. Cosby, New York Times bestselling author of All the Sinners Bleed
No one can make the everyday vagaries of life feel like Greek tragedies the way William Boyle can. He effortlessly maps the path of desire that moves through the human heart like burning chrome.Gravesend is only an hour from New York City's Grand Central Station by subway, but Manhattan "might as well be Mars" to the characters of Saint of the Narrows Street. It is a small neighborhood in south Brooklyn, just north of the better-known Coney Island and Brighton Beach.
The name "Gravesend" sounds macabre, but its roots are benign, if somewhat debated. There are two competing origins—English or Dutch—of the neighborhood's name. The Dutch colonized what is now Brooklyn (then called "Breuckelen") in the 1640s, parceling the area into six different villages, including Gravesend and other, better-known names, like Bushwick and Flatbush. (The present-day neighborhoods bearing these names are about at the center of ...
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