BookBrowse Reviews Saint of the Narrows Street by William Boyle

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William Boyle's latest page-turner is both a noirish crime thriller and an intimate family portrait of love and longing

Gravesend, Brooklyn is the epicenter of Risa Franzone's Italian-American working class community. Her parents live down the street from the ground floor apartment where she and her husband Sav live. Her neighbors see her at church every week; they know about Sav's gambling and philandering, though they may or may not know about the abuse. One fateful night, Sav goes too far, bringing home a gun and using it to threaten Risa, their infant son Fab, and Risa's sister Giulia. In the heated scene that ensues, Risa accidentally kills Sav with her trusty cast iron frying pan—in which, moments earlier, she had been heating up cutlets like a dutiful housewife.

Rather than involve the police and plead self-defense, Risa, Giulia, and their neighbor Chooch decide to cover up the death. The rest of their community have no trouble believing that Saverio Franzone walked out on his wife and child, especially because his elder brother Roberto had done the same thing a few years prior, skipping town with Jimmy Tomasullo's wife after robbing his store. For Risa, Giulia, Chooch, and Fab, life goes on. Risa in particular wants to erase Sav from her life completely and prevent her son from following in his footsteps. But despite their efforts to move on, the four characters find the rest of their lives unfolding in response to the events of that night, and shaped by their attempts to avoid the consequences of their actions.

Told in four parts over eighteen years, Saint of the Narrows Street starts in 1986 with Sav's death and then skips forward to pivotal moments in 1991, 1998, and 2004, as various people start questioning Risa's version of that night and getting closer to the truth. Boyle's crime thriller has the drama and pathos of a Greek tragedy as each section introduces another complication to the cover-up. The first obstacle arrives in 1991, when Sav's brother Roberto returns to town. Most of the neighborhood had assumed that Sav went off to join Roberto, but Roberto knows that Sav hasn't contacted him, making him suspicious about his brother's disappearance. "I can smell a lie like a fart in a closed closet, and I'm gonna start shaking some trees around here and see what the fuck's really going on," he says. Nervous, Risa and Giulia call Chooch to figure out what to do; in addition to protecting herself, Risa wants to keep Roberto, an influence far too reminiscent of Sav, away from Fab, who is still so young and trusting.

As the book continues, Boyle switches between Risa, Giulia, Chooch, and Fab's perspectives and lives on Saint of the Narrows Street, where the four remain among their neighbors and community over the years. Risa—the book's protagonist, despite the four intertwined narratives—is largely motivated by her love and worry for her son, and her actions drive the twists and turns of the plot—starting, of course, with Sav's murder: her tolerance for his abuse finally comes to an end when he threatens Fab. After Sav's death, Risa goes back to school and takes on a nursing job, making money to send Fab to a good school. Over the course of the novel, she grows older, remains single, and devotes herself completely to motherhood, trying to ensure that Fab does not become like his father.

But for all her devotion and sacrifice, Risa is no match for what is passed down through blood, nor the force that is teenage angst when Fab reaches adolescence. "Fab's got his father's blood in him, no doubt about it. He's developed a taste for danger," Risa says. "[He] wants to find his father and know him, though there's no him left to find or know." Fab himself makes a life-altering decision as he turns eighteen, which Risa finds that she has no ability to control. (Really, parents, why do we even do it?) In this way, Saint of the Narrows Street is as much a deeply poignant narrative about family and our desires in life as it is a page-turning crime thriller.

William Boyle, a master of atmosphere, crafts a gritty world of tough-talkers, heavy-drinkers, and good folks just trying to make ends meet. As a child, Boyle was known to walk around with a tape recorder in hand, recording conversations between neighbors, friends, and family in Gravesend, where he grew up. He would later turn these into plays or stories, capturing the dialogue and speech patterns that defined Gravesend for him. This intimate knowledge of Gravesend is on full display in Saint of the Narrows Street, in which the details and dialogue all scream south Brooklyn. Take, for instance, Boyle's description of Widow Marie, the owner of Giulia's local bar, the Crisscross: "Widow Marie's lost a couple of inches over the years. She drinks diet cola from an empty ricotta container. She wears sweaters in the summer. She seems bent. Arms all bony. Voice gruffer…Giulia takes out her cigarettes—Widow Marie isn't frightened by the prospect of a fine—and lights one." One can practically smell the smoke in the bar, where people still smoke inside even after New York's indoor smoking ban in 2003, and feel the weariness of Risa's bones after a long day and commute back from the Coney Island nursing facility. Despite being a neighborhood in one of the largest cities in the world, Boyle's Gravesend feels insular and intimate, and readers may find themselves emerging from the novel, back into the real world, talking with a little bit of Brooklyn flair.

This review first ran in the February 26, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.