I call it “kitchen sink crime drama.” I was influenced by the realism of the 1950s and 1960s…novels, plays, and movies like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life, and Look Back in Anger. They are all a big influence on this work.
Imagine a crime story set in Brooklyn, but with the aesthetics of the “kitchen sink dramas” such as in the British New Wave films of the 1960s. Picture a Tony Richardson film laced with Brooklyn-ese dialogue and crime, and you are on your way to understanding the gestalt of the latest riveting novel by William Boyle, Saint of the Narrows Street.
Boyle has established himself as a recognizable and distinct force in Brooklyn-set crime dramas. However, his stories are also realist, character-driven explorations of ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances. Saint of the Narrows Street (Soho Crime) addresses tragedy and regret within three generations of an Italian-American family living in Gravesend, Brooklyn, who are harboring a dark secret. Yes, there is murder and mayhem, but the richly textured characters are what drive the narrative in this novel.
Domestic realism, tragedy, and murder are the key elements of Saint of the Narrows Street. Boyle explores, in vivid detail, the motivations, challenges, loyalties, and elements faced by his characters. He brings the pathos of these “lost souls” to the page with exquisite results. The novel moves briskly and one cannot help but be enveloped in the fabric of the tragic Shakespearean street-play prose.
I was fortunate enough to meet up with William Boyle via Zoom for a candid interview to discuss the Saint of the Narrows Street. The interview is as follows:
You were born and raised in Brooklyn. What is it about Brooklyn that is so enticing to readers? There are a host of writers who have mythologized Brooklyn.
I can only speak about my own experience growing up there. I grew up with in a time where there was still a lot of mob lore in the air. Bensonhurst, in particular, was central to this. I guess that added to the mythology. I read a lot of true crime as a kid. I read a lot of books about the mob and a lot of that stuff was happening around my area.
Coney Island is also a mythological type of place. My neighborhood is only a few blocks from the subway tracks where John Travolta does his Saturday Night Fever -two-slice pizza strut at “Lenny’s” and where The French Connection chase was filmed. Movies and books are always key to adding to that myth.
You really have a gift for capturing working -class culture and values. Are some of the characters based on people or stories you knew?
Like with all fiction, I am trying to get to some emotional truth. There is a lot of imagination and made-up material, but there are definitely elements of truth. Very rarely have I ever written a character that was explicitly based on a real person. But there are mixtures. There is a lot of me in these characters. There is a lot of my mom in these characters. My grandparents, friends, extended family, bits and pieces and details. That was the world I knew- middle-class, working people. Church on Saturdays at 5pm. Catholic Schools. That’s the type of stuff I grew up and the world I write about and the world that haunts me the most.
What subgenre would you characterize this novel as other than just a crime drama?
I am happy to call it crime fiction/literary crime fiction. I call it “kitchen sink crime drama.” I was influenced by the realism of the 1950s and 1960s…novels, plays, and movies like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life, and Look Back in Anger. They are all a big influence on this work. It’s about working-class people in moments of crisis in cramped settings. Kitchens, living rooms, dive bars – it doesn’t totally fit into that, and I am really interested in realism, but I also stray into the mythological.
How is this novel different from your other works?
David Lynch is one of my biggest artistic heroes and he just passed away obviously a few days ago. I read an obituary that said Lynch was always concerned with the “same things,” but was always evolving in different ways. I think that I really love that about a lot of artists….they use the same themes but they are constantly changing. For me that is what this book does. It takes themes and ideas and looks at them in a different way… It looks at aging, loss, and time. Time factors in this book in a way that I’ve never done before.
I always call myself a ‘coward” when it comes to time because most of my books are set over a couple of days or a week. This books spans over 18 years. I wanted it to feel like a family saga.
Yes, that reminds me of artists like Scorsese and Paul Schrader who seem to be concerned with themes like faith and redemption, which manifest themselves again and again but in different forms throughout their body of work.
I think Schrader is a perfect example. Schrader tells the same story in different ways and that is something I really respond to.
Is this a novel of regret?
Risa is yearning for a different experience and part of the buried subtext is about the crumbling of her faith. She is devout at the start of the book and by the end of the book she is somewhat lost.
Where does the title come from?
At some point, I wanted a memorable name. I wasn’t thinking about meaning. It felt mysterious and relevant.
Who are your favorite crime authors?
Megan Abbott, Sara Gran, Jordan Harper, Ace Atkins, S.A. Cosby, Eli Cranor among many contemporary authors are great… and of course the giants of the genre, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane and Richard Price. Those guys were a massive influence on me. They are my contemporary heroes. My favorite old school crime writers are David Goodis, Jim Thompson, Chester Himes, Patricia Highsmith, and James M. Cain.
The violence in the novel is cyclical. Are the characters doomed from the start?
I think that “doom” is a classic noir trope. I also think that a big part of noir is tragedy. That is something I have always been concerned with, I think doom, ultimately, is something that I am fascinated by. People can be doomed if they believe themselves to be doomed.
William Blick is a film and literary/crime fiction critic; a librarian; and an academic scholar. His work has been featured in Film International, Senses of Cinema, Film Threat, Cineaction, and CinemaRetro, and he is a frequent contributor to Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of Noircon. His crime fiction has been featured in Close to the Bone, Pulp Metal Magazine, Out of the Gutter, and others. He is an Assistant Professor/Librarian for the City University of New York.
Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of NoirCon 