Saint of the Narrows Street
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3.9 • 12 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
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 south 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Boyle (Shoot the Moonlight Out) delivers his most ambitious novel yet with this extraordinary crime saga set in the working-class neighborhood of Gravesend, Brooklyn. The story opens in 1986, with 28-year-old Risa realizing she's made a tragic mistake by marrying Saverio "Sav" Franzone. Sav's escalating violence comes to a head the night he drunkenly pulls a gun on Risa and the couple's eight-month old son. When Sav threatens Risa's sister later that night, Risa reflexively grabs a metal pan and hits him with it, killing him. The sisters panic and turn for help to their neighbor, Christopher "Chooch" Gardini, a childhood friend of Sav's who harbors secret feelings for Risa. Chooch comes up with a plan to bury the body on his family's land upstate, and over the next two decades, it appears the cover-up has worked: most neighbors are satisfied with the story that Sav ran off and abandoned his family, but doubts persist, especially among the regulars of the local dive bar. As Risa and Sav's son grows up and begins to follow in his father's criminal footsteps, he becomes increasingly obsessed with learning more about the night Sav died. Boyle structures the sprawling tale like a Greek tragedy, mining potent themes of legacy and class with such force and empathy that readers may come to think of him as the Balzac of Brooklyn. It's a stunning achievement.
