City of Margins by William Boyle

Murder and despair link Boyle’s characters, but with Brooklyn rhythms embedded in their speech, their interactions are vivid and uplifting. Donnie is a disgraced ex-cop with blood on his hands. Lonely widow Ava, ruined by the debt her husband built up to a vicious crime boss, is trapped in a job she despises. Her grubby teacher son, Nick, fantasises about an easy route to success. Donna, Donnie’s ex-wife, is struggling to recover from the suicide of Gabe, their teenage son. College dropout Mikey seeks a purpose for his aimless existence. Only teenage Antonia, with plans to break free of the dismal Italian-American backwater where her forebears were trapped, is aspirational.

Set in Southern Brooklyn, USA, in the 1990s, City of Margins resonates with memories of Italy, even though not one of the characters has visited the country of their heritage. Family legends have been passed down the generations, but the language has been lost. Perhaps the first immigrants abandoned Italian during their struggle to survive in the new world, or possibly their children found it easier to blend into society without carrying the stigma of foreign speech. Ava expresses regret that her parents, who spoke Italian with their own parents, did not teach her a single word. ‘She wonders what it means to be from a place but not to know the place at all. This makes her sad.’

Cooking is one of the few things to have survived this general abandonment of Italian culture. It is a significant motif in City of Margins, appearing as a sexual advance, a maternal attempt to hold fragmented families together or a way to create an illusion of closeness where none exists. The women obsess about food and drink, while the men graze on crisps between violent clashes or episodes of fantasy. Behind the ‘chicken parm’ Mikey’s mother broods over, the Folgers coffee in every household, pignoli pastries and ubiquitous bubbling gravy, there lurks a hidden meaning. The human longing to nurture and be nurtured has been brutally overcome by an urge to grab and run.

Adherence to the Roman Catholic Church is another survival from the ancestral life in Sicily or Calabria. Very few of the characters even bother to pay lip service to religion, but for some, it still has deep significance. The influence of the local church appears to be social rather than spiritual. Several of the characters remember each other from their days at the school attached to it, and the building itself is familiar and reassuring. The priest and nuns represent the knowledge of good and evil. Everyone has been taught right from wrong, but in the struggle for everyday survival, Hell is an occupational hazard for the citizens of the City of Margins.

I was totally absorbed by this book, published by No Exit Press, from its jaw-dropping first chapter to the unpredictable finale.