The End by Salvatore Scibona: A Review

**FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD**

** WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S YOUNG LIONS FICTION AWARD**

The End is published by Graywolf Press, the highlighted publisher for this Spotlight On Small Press Series. Their tagline "A Rare Breed of Publisher" has shown itself throughout this series in each of the reviews published by other blogs.  You can check those out here.

Cover Design-Kyle G. Hunter

Cover Photo-Jack Delano;

Night View of part of Santa Fe R.R. yard; Kansas City, Kansas; 1943

Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division

FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USW 36-656. 

The End

by Salvatore Scibona

released October 6, 2009

Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN-10: 1594484058
ISBN-13: 978-1594484056

Synopsis from Goodreads:

It is August 15, 1953, the day of a boisterous and unwieldy street carnival in Elephant Park, an Italian immigrant enclave in northern Ohio. As the festivities reach a riotous pitch and billow into the streets, five members of the community labor under the weight of a terrible secret. As these floundering souls collide, one day of calamity and consequence sheds light on a half century of their struggles, their follies, and their pride. And slowly, it becomes clear that buried deep in the hearts of these five exquisitely drawn characters is the long-silenced truth about the crime that twisted each of their worlds.

Cast against the racial, spiritual, and moral tension that has given rise to modern America, this first novel exhumes the secrets lurking in the darkened crevices of the soul of our country. Inventive, explosive, and revelatory, The End introduces Salvatore Scibona as an important new voice in American fiction.

The first quarter of the book focuses on the local baker, Rocco.  He and his wife, Loveypants (her boxcar name), settle down in Elephant Park, Ohio.

It was from this waterway here, Elephant Creek, that the neighborhood had taken its name, although physically it was not a creek anymore but a river. Long after it had gotten its name, two other creeks had been diverted into it upstream to drain a swamp that was to become a rail yard, but still you called it a creek and not a river because the name is the soul of the thing and persists long after the thing named has passed away.

Rocco loses his wife and three sons to New Jersey and the candy bar factory when Roosevelt begins to give away food rations due to WWII. No one can afford to buy fresh baked bread or sweets, and the family is starving.  For a while the middle son remains with his father, fattens and grows up but then asks that he be allowed to be with his mother.  This separation continues throughout the years. The boys grow up, move out, marry, join the military.  It is when Rocco receives notice that his middle son has died in the Korean War and he does not believe the notice that he decides to go to New Jersey to bring his family back home. It is at this point the book opens.

The next character introduced is Mrs. Marini. She immigrated to the United States from Lazio, Italy to be with a beau she spoke with only three times!  Her husband adores her, helps her to get an education by 'unofficially' auditing college classes. Throughout the book hints are given as to Mrs. Marini's occupation that made her and her husband so well-off.  Even in today's standards, her "job" would be considered questionable.

Lina, Enzo and Ciccio - Lina, the daughter Mrs. Marini never had. She wanted to apprentice her in the basement occupation, but Enzo refused to allowed it. Once betrayed by Lina, can Mrs. Marini forgive her or not? Enzo, Lina's husband, who, by all rights and purposes, appears to be the most admirable character out of them all. He works hard, for his family, his friends. He desperately wants a son - who finally arrives in Ciccio. And although Mrs. Marini offers to pay for Ciccio's private education, it is Enzo who works hard as a foreman laying brick to pay for his son's education. He adores his son, rarely giving discipline or doling the discipline and then giving Ciccio a bag of licorice.

Then there is the jeweler. We never get to know his name. He is a shadowy character that somehow has a link to everyone. It is that way throughout the book. Each character introduced will have touched another character in some manner. Have you ever played the "Six Steps to Kevin Bacon?" The End is a good representation the Kevin Bacon game and life in that respect.

I know there is a lot more that I probably should have gotten out of the book; however, I have to be honest with you - this one was hard .... to .... read .... At times I was unsure of who was speaking, which character we were on and what the problem at hand really was. There were many difficulties alluded to in the book that could be "the" terrible secret. Although it was a National Book Award Finalist, I felt the storyline extremely difficult to follow and that I was missing the point.  Scibona's work is compared to that of Saul Bellow, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. That should have sent up warning bells right there for me!!!

Scibona goes back and forth in his conversations. One moment Mrs. Marini's husband is still alive, the next he's been dead for over 30 years. It was hard to keep up.  Also, abandonment was a common theme throughout the book. Rocco's wife leaves him and takes their children with her in the beginning of the book; various other characters leave, some come back and some don't. The difficulty is that I never could keep up with which time period I was in - was it while they were here or were they gone? CONFUSING!!!

I did learn that Assumption Day was widely celebrated amongst immigrants, and it is the Christian holiday commemorating the Virgin Mary's assumption into Heaven.

I also enjoyed several of the conversations by the characters, such as Mrs. Marini when she's feeding her convalescent husband:

You moved again to kiss me as we walked, and I pushed you away, and you whispered, almost touching my ear with your mouth, something as vulgar as I have ever heard you say--you remember, what you said you were going to do, the thing you said you were going to do to me, right there on the street, standing. And I said in my thoughts, wishing you could know without having hear me say it, If you would only refuse me, I would give myself away to you.

Oh my goodness, how true is that? Why is it that we always want what we cannot have and we do not want what is right in our hands?

You felt what you felt; whereas I, like a scientist, was always trying to know what I felt. I made experiments in my brain like a fool: If this, then how would I feel? If that, then how? My heart was hidden from me, and I believed I had to abuse it to make it give up its secrets. I wanted you, from your own disinclination, to refuse me so that I could comprehend my feelings by suffering them. But you would not withdraw from me and make a space in which I could put my thoughts between us. So I have never known, and do not know now, my own feelings; I only feel them.

Mrs. Marini was one interesting character! If you'd like to see what My Friend Amy had to say about reading The End jump on over here.   To hear the National Public Radio interview with Salvatore Scibona click here.

"The End" interview with Salvatore Scibona from Salvatore Scibona on Vimeo.

 an introduction to The End from Riverhead Books

For me, I give it 3 out of 5 quills.

Book Source: I purchased this book for my Kindle for my own personal use.