Last Acts: A Novel

by Alexander Sammartino

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE * “An astonishing baller of a book…pitch perfect in voice (Tony Soprano meets Samuel Beckett)…Unputdownable.” —Mary Karr * “Hilarious, exceptional.” — The New York Times Book Review

A riotous, irreverent yet big-hearted debut novel about a broke father-son duo who go all-in on some of America’s deadliest obsessions.

Even though his firearms store is failing, things are looking up for David Rizzo. His son, Nick, has just recovered after a near-fatal overdose, which means one Rizzo can use Nick’s resurrection to create the most compelling television commercial for a gun emporium the world has ever seen. After all, this is America, Rizzo tells himself. Surely anything is possible. But the relationship between father and son is fragile, mired in mutual disappointment. And when the pair embarks on their scheme to avoid bankruptcy, a high-stakes crash of hijinks, hope, and disaster ensues.

Featuring a cast of unforgettable characters and “honest, high-wire virtuosic writing” (George Saunders) this razor-sharp social satire “pays tribute to gallows humorists like Sam Lipsyte, Gary Shteyngart, Jonathan Tropper, and Jonathan Franzen” (Chicago Review of Books).

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Novels, Literature, Humor

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 23, 2024

About the author

Alexander Sammartino lives in Brooklyn. He received his MFA from Syracuse University. Last Acts is his first novel.

Reviews

[Cecil · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book because there were blurbs praising it from authors I like. I’m not sure if we read the same book, because nothing I read was worth any praise. As a satirical critique of marketing it failed, as a straightforward father-son relationship novel it failed, as a critique of gun culture it failed. It also failed to be the least bit interesting.

[Shelby (catching up on 2025 reviews) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finding the strangest theme in my reading this month..... addiction!

I started with The Many Lives of Mama Love, and subsequently read:

Northwoods
Drunk-ish
The Clinic
What is Mine
and now Last Acts
All with addiction themes.

Weird coincidence!

𝗟𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝘀
𝗔𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗼

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Rizzos are having a rough go. David is about to lose his gun shop, while his son Nick is addicted to heroin. Following an overdose, the two pair up for the first time in a year, intent on saving the gun shop through hair-brained schemes and hijinx.

Last Acts is a unique, satirical, mixed media novel that somehow manages to make guns and opiods entertaining and funny. It's a sharp, witty, commentary on good ol' 'Merica, while also exploring fragile father son relationships. While this one won't work for every reader, I found it to be quite good.

Thank you Scribner for the gifted copy. ❤️

[James B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley and Scribner for the ebook. This is a wonderfully satiric novel about a father and son relationship in America today. Rizzo runs a gun shop in Arizona that no one visits. His son Nick has just survived a near fatal overdose. Rizzo can’t afford to send Nick to rehab, so instead he has a TV commercial made to exploit his son’s situation and promote his failing business. And that’s just the beginning of a story that’s told over several years and with an endless supply of oddball characters throughout.

[Stacy40pages · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last Acts by Alexander Sammartino. Thanks to @bookclubfavorites for the gifted copy ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Rizzo owns a gun store, which is failing. After his son, Nick, recovers from a near-fatal drug overdose, he brings him to work for him. They use Nick’s resurrection for a commercial and it takes off.

This was a quirky and apt satire about gun ownership and commercialism today. I particularly enjoyed the first half. The second half had some mixed media and parts went over my head. I think this will be a book many will love, but some will hate. It is a very unique review. I found myself laughing out loud a few times and really had no idea how it would unwind. This was also a very fast paced and quick read.

“He believed a man was the sum of his actions, and he was dismayed by his own total.”

Last Acts comes out 1/23.

[Laura Solar · Rating 2 out of 5]

I… no. This book is only 213 pages and felt like an absolute lifetime. I don’t know if I just didn’t get it, or if this book just has no point. Maybe this will work for some people, but between the drawn out way of writing and the boring (lack of) plot, this was just a miss all around for me.

[Brady Parkin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book tried to play a balancing game between hilarious satire and dark reality and it only really succeeded in small moments.

I do think other people will like this book, but the structure and the prose for me just didn’t come together. Overall it was an uncomfortable read…but not uncomfortable on the way I think was intended. I happy to be finished reading it.

There is some merit to it and that if people are able to connect with the style, it could be a win for them. It just wasn’t for me. Not a bad book, but not one I personally enjoyed.

[Ruben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings about this one. It is definitely funny in a way that reminded me of Donald Ray Pollock and the Texan setting was great. But as the book progressed and the focus shifted from one main character to the other, I somehow cared less and less.

I guess it tries to address important themes such as gun violence, addiction, father-son relationships, but that is very difficult to pull off in a satirical tone.

[Mustafa Marwan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The execution is not as good as the premise. Bite size chapters are a big plus. It's somewhere in-between satire and literary and ended up neither. However, there are parts that I read twice because they were spot on.

[Izzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last acts by Alexander Sammartino

Ch 1
Locus: Phoenix.. America ..
A lot of smoking…..salesmanship… dreams

David Rizzo: age maybe 60; his relationship to his son: savior of the gun shop!; an estranged son, back for a reason
The gunshop
Junior Rizzo ( Nicholas) age 30 revived and collected at hospital; rather than rehab to work in Dad’s failing store. Unkempt, thin…
Ch 2: David Rizzo crying
Ch 3: David can gesture….convoluted grievances… television’s absorption vs telephone induced uncertainty …
Ambivalence towards son!
Ch 4:working in gunshop or rehab?
Ch 5
Ch10
Buford Bellum, a hustler from his teenage years; now quite wealthy desert tycoon; had sold David on gunshop…David ready to sell back to Buford
Ch 6
Informed by Felicia of Southwest Pools, he’s ‘missing in action’ for failing to show
Not acceptable to rehab with an invalid credit card
Nick also crying
Ch 7
Sharing confidences: father and son
Ch 8
Uncle Gio’s battle of Bulge remembrance and origin of Agita and Sartre & existentialism .. from whom Rizzo inherited a gun! Missing Gio’s funeral in Providence..
Crying at Old Canteen, Uncle Gio’s favorite place at same time he’s left by Allegra… and then he invested in Gunshop…to earn love
Ch 9
Rizzo sees a bunch of doctors….

Ronnie Deloitte:
Waiting for a crazy customer…
Waiting for son Nick to use again…
Dad: Rocco,
Mom: Anne Marie, sold shoes
Rizzo at 18, paratrooper, in Central America
Allegro Constantino, live of his life,legs… nicholas’ mother?
factory, Phoenix, kindergarten teacher,
Nick has fucked up his prior life
Anti drug ad; Rizzo firearms; starring Nick..
By ch 10 much water under the bridge with Buford at time Rizzo is ready to sell back…
After meeting Buford decision to stay in business with Nick
Rizzo sells Beowulf assault gun to a kid, Steve…
Ch 11: Nick making a TV ad for the gunshop and sobriety
Reminiscences of growing up in Providence ; green beret at age 18
Ch13: routines at gunshop; some flashbacks to Nick’s life before getting clean
ch 14: setting and script to ad…combating opioid addiction … multiple takes.. Nicholas cries … ad happened eventually…
Ch 15: in church communion; ad successful
Ch 16: describes Az; gunshop prospers
Talks circuit..for Rizzo and Nick
Other neighbors selling out…
Ch18: Felicia also missed .. her daughter also a user; selling out to Buford .
She becomes an anti gun shop demonstrator
And Nick determines she is helping business
Ch 19: an inept 17 year old school shooter
Ch 20: Rizzo sold Beowulf to kid underage or Scapegoat/Philanthropist businessman
Nick, part owner, doesn’t know what to say
Ch 21: Rizzo on tensions: guards.vs Blacks
To talk only with white guys over 50
Rizzo: sell
Nicholas: growing the business
A family ad for the business

Part II 2017…Eiffel tower dealership:
Nick’s Gun display outside church:
customer snapshots
Demonstrators @Rizzo’s: Nicholas responds
Social Media posts
a former addict Matt Wilson assists
Seasoned indifference: gets Nick to NA mtg
Buford celebrates this NA: clean x 15 years
Ch 5 Visits Dad: interesting interaction
Nick tells his Dad Buford can free from guns
Dad doesn’t trust Buford
Nick hiking “A” in Tempe with Matt
Nick has bad dream flashbacks
Matt running the store; but failing and crying
Boxing with Elise Allsworth
Lunch with Elise : helping shooting survivors
Visions during arrest: as a child…shadows..lawn.. brick house ..total silence
Huge guilt felt by Nick for Elise’ trauma
Ch 14: Deciding to also help Mass shooting survivors by crowdfunding
Ch 20: Matt blows up gunshop by promotional rocket
“Take care of yourself
“Sell the business
“Don’t sell the house
Nicholas failed on all three
Ew apartment: shelves lined with:


Who Says a Novel About Guns and Opioids Can’t Be Funny?
“Last Acts,” by Alexander Sammartino, is a satire of contemporary America set at a firearms shop in Phoenix.
Image


By Dan Chaon
Dan Chaon is the author of seven works of fiction, most recently the novel “Sleepwalk,” now in paperback.

LAST ACTS, by Alexander Sammartino

Alexander Sammartino’s exceptional, hilarious debut novel, “Last Acts,” is the tale of two salesmen in Phoenix: David Rizzo and his estranged son, Nick. Both men’s lives are floundering. Rizzo Sr. is drowning in debt and about to lose his firearms store because of several failed moneymaking and promotional schemes; his son has drifted from a gig-economy career as a digital marketer to become a full-time heroin addict.
As the book opens, David is on his way to a meeting with a real estate tycoon, who might be willing to purchase his store before it’s foreclosed on, when he gets a call from his son. Nick is in the hospital, recovering after a brush with death from an overdose. More than a year has passed since they last saw each other, but Nick has nowhere else to turn.
Thrown unwillingly together, the pair embark on a plan to save the father’s business, which will take them on a merry-go-round of success and disaster. Sammartino switches perspectives between this odd couple: The father, a lifelong wheeler-dealer who has sold cars, “never-dulling knives” door to door, recyclable IV bags to hospitals and Shasta Jacuzzis to hotels, is an eagerly self-deluding, Willy Loman-esque optimist soaked in flop sweat, whose fondest hope is to be “more than another guy whose life came up soul-crushingly short.” The son, meanwhile, is possessed by an ineffable, listless sadness, “staring at a search bar without knowing what to type,” and churning out internet promotional copy for small businesses like Pretty Paws Doggy Treats and PHX Home Hospice (“Dying is hard. We make it easy”).
But like his father, he too has a dreamer’s spirit, and he comes up with an idea for an inspirational, confessional infomercial that features his own overdose as its selling point and promises a cut of every sale to rehab centers and halfway houses:
What separates us from all the other gun dealers in the desert, though, is our commitment to combating opioid addiction. … I’m a recovering addict. … My father, David Rizzo, has made it his mission to be the first gun shop in America that aims for a social good. So come on in and tell us your story. At Rizzo’s Firearms, we’re shooting addiction dead.
When this unlikely advertisement strikes a chord with the gun-buying public, Nick and his father become local business celebrities — though soon enough, Rizzo’s Firearms finds itself at the center of a circus of controversy.
Given the stew of hot-button subjects “Last Acts” takes on — gun culture, mass shootings, the frenzied throes of late capitalism, the opioid crisis — it would be easy for the satire to become heavy-handed. But Sammartino is extraordinarily good at balancing the farcical nature of contemporary America with the complex humanity of his characters. He’s also a magnificent sentence writer, with a gift for pulling poetry out of an American vernacular that recalls the early work of George Saunders, and a sense of the beauty in shoddy landscapes:
He passed an unpaved neighborhood that, replete with scaffolding for future homes, resembled dazzling ruins; a grimacing man stood on a median, raising water bottles at the traffic; a woman in a sweatshirt pushed a shopping cart toward tents made out of blankets and patched tarps. … It was the time of year when many of the succulents had pink-petaled flowers pinched between their glochids.
While many novelists are struggling to figure out how best to address the state of the nation — centerless, ridiculous and terrifying, doomed yet trivial, dire yet unheroic — Sammartino seems to have cracked the code. What he gets exactly right is the way we all keep toddling along, heads down, going to work and paying the bills, checking our phones and streaming videos to keep ourselves distracted, ever hopefully, haplessly dog-paddling against the current, even as we’re borne away by the messes we’ve made.

LAST ACTS | By Alexander Sammartino | Scribner | 213 pp. | $27

[Lauren Fanella · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Bobbi bobbijoreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Rizzo and Nick are a father and son duo trying to get by. Nick is an addict and after an OD he joins his dad in running the family business - a gun shop. After unforseen circumstances, Nick is on his own to try and keep things afloat until his dad is back.

This debut is a poignant contemporary fiction. I expected more outright comedy but it felt like a satirical dramedy. The story is hearty, revolving around drug addiction, gun violence, poverty and income inequality with an undertone of humor through the personalities of the characters.

This is Sammartino's debut and it is incredibly well written. I loved the formatting.. there is the actual storyline and then chapters of News Reports, Emails, and Media Marketing. I got a kick out of the hashtags in the media marketing. The mannerisms in his writing style reminded me of works by Stephen Graham Jones.

This has a bittersweet open ending, which felt perfect for the story.

💬 Quoteable:

"This is how I know God is real: my son who makes me laugh."

I received a complimentary copy from Scribner Books and am leaving an honest review voluntarily.

[Chaunceton Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brisk, funny, and full of absurdist charm. For all its energy and cleverness, though, the novel is as dry as the Phoenix desert it's set in.

[Anne Rowland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last Acts is a one-of-kind, topical novel that I could not put down. Nick and Rizzo are the kind of characters you just can’t help feeling for - in spite of or perhaps even because of their tough exteriors. Their relationship, along with the writing, is the star of the show.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5) A very impressive debut, to be sure, and I’ll be looking for this writer’s next books with anticipation.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tale of two losers: father and son. Set in Phoenix I enjoyed the descriptions of the desert. It’s a satire on modern society: guns, drugs, capitalism, etc. David Rizzo, the father, owns a gun store that is not doing well financially. One of those guys who is a failed huckster. His son Nick is a junkie who is resurrected from an overdose. But there’s lots of love and soon some financial success due to a fresh marketing idea. But of course they can’t deal with success. The vicissitudes of the Rizzo Family continue as does life. All too real at times.

[Vincent DiGirolamo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not likely to appear on any middle-school reading list with its starkly droll treatment of drug addiction, the gun trade, school shootings, bogus internet philanthropies, and the commodification of everything. The storytelling is lean, elliptical, lyrical. The humor is dark. The rants and dialogues are sharp, like products of eavesdropping, mostly in unsavory desert locales. The emotional plotting always rings true. The estranged father-and-son protagonists manage to win our hearts despite their ceaseless screwups. The result is a kind of satirical neo-naturalism that makes you wish this weren't the world we're living in, yet grateful that hope endures in the harshest conditions. The beauty of the desert does not go unnoticed.

[Hillary Copsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I whipped through this very clever and sad book about men in America. I was entertained, but left wanting more. Reading this is like watching John Oliver or The Daily Show or scrolling through whatever the algorithm feeds you on social media -- you'll laugh and be a little outraged and sad about things that already make you a little outraged or sad. And usually, you won't be asked to do anything or change in anyway; that's for those people.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite like anything I’ve read before. The author has been compared to George Saunders and maybe that’s right. A lot of humor given the characters are pretty much all in sad situations. A lot of humanity as well, and the location, in Arizona, is interesting.

Good NYT review: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/bo...

[Colie Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Would give it 6 stars if I could. I loved this book.

[Dorota · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

[Nick Kunze]

Doesn’t quite congeal. Good writing and a solid sense of humor, but it’s missing a center. Ends up feeling rudderless, even though there were plenty of moments I liked.

[Dani Winkler · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Jenny]

I do not want to give this one a star rating because I don’t think I should rate a book when it was just not a book for me. I do not enjoy reading books about the opioid crisis and the profiting of selling guns which result in mass shootings. I read reviews that the book is a satirical look at these tragic realities, and I can acknowledge that I am not the reader for this type of book. Demon Copperhead dealt with similar issues, which I also struggled through, but was more enjoyable because the story line was great and the characters were interesting.

This was a book club pick for me, otherwise I would not have picked it up. I am sure it has its audience who will appreciate it. Unfortunately it wasn’t for me.

[ThreeSonorans Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Desert Dreams and Desperate Measures: A Review of Alexander Sammartino's "Last Acts"
By Maestro Morales, Three Sonorans Reviews
Today I'm reflecting on Alexander Sammartino's debut novel Last Acts – a story that hits closer to home than most, unfolding in the sunbaked sprawl of Phoenix, just a few hours' drive from my own Tucson barrio.

As both a librarian and former mathematics professor, I've developed a habit of analyzing narratives for their underlying patterns and equations. Sammartino's story offers plenty to calculate: one failing gun shop, one recovering addict son, multiplied by desperation, divided by estrangement, all against the backdrop of our shared Sonoran Desert home.

Qué libro tan impactante. It's rare to find contemporary fiction that captures Arizona's contradictions so vividly – the harsh beauty alongside strip mall desolation, the rugged individualism versus our need for community connection.

About the Author and His Desert Debut
Alexander Sammartino emerges as a fresh voice in American fiction with this debut and as someone who grew up in Arizona. Sammartino demonstrates remarkable insight into the psychology of desperation and the particular brand of the American Dream that still draws people to our sunbelt cities despite their increasingly inhospitable climate – both meteorological and economic.

Last Acts joins a growing body of contemporary Southwest literature that examines the region beyond tourist brochures and retirement community advertisements. Much like the works of Tommy Orange, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Leslie Marmon Silko, Sammartino's novel acknowledges that the land itself is a character—one that influences human behavior through its extremes and contradictions.

The Arizona Landscape: Strip Malls and Lost Souls
What struck me most powerfully about Last Acts is its unflinching portrayal of modern Arizona urbanism. David Rizzo's struggling gun shop exists in a landscape many of us recognize but rarely see depicted in literature – the endless commercial strips, the cookie-cutter developments, the asphalt expanses reflecting heat back into an already overburdened atmosphere.

¿Qué pasó con nuestras ciudades bonitas? What happened to our beautiful cities?

Sammartino's descriptions of the commercial strips housing Rizzo's Firearms resonate deeply with those of us who have witnessed the transformation of our Southwestern communities. His vivid portrayal of faded storefronts, payday loan centers, and endless asphalt expanses captures the reality of modern Phoenix urbanism. Where once the desert's natural contours and indigenous wisdom shaped human habitation, we now impose geometric grids and corporate templates with little regard for place or community.

The gun shop becomes a potent metaphor – a business theoretically built on protection and self-reliance that instead contributes to isolation and fear.

As an Indigenous Chicano activist who has fought against unchecked development and for the preservation of Indigenous spaces, I found myself nodding in recognition at Sammartino's subtle critiques. The Phoenix he portrays is a place where human connections struggle to survive in environments designed primarily for commerce, not community. Each strip mall, each six-lane road, becomes another barrier between people like Rizzo and his son – physical manifestations of the emotional distances they struggle to cross.

Como siempre decía mi abuela, "The land remembers even when people forget." In Last Acts, the transformed landscape of metropolitan Phoenix seems to remember its desert origins through the relentless heat that beats down on Rizzo's failing enterprise, the way it extracts moisture and hope with equal efficiency.

The Weight of Addiction in the Desert Heat
Nick Rizzo's overdose and fragile recovery form the emotional core of Last Acts, and Sammartino handles this dimension with remarkable nuance. As someone who has witnessed addiction's impact on families in our communities, I appreciated the author's resistance to both romanticization and demonization. Instead, Nick's addiction is both a personal struggle and a social phenomenon—a reflection of the emptiness that goes beyond individual psychology.

Particularly compelling is how Sammartino connects Nick's substance use to the broader spiritual malaise of contemporary Arizona. In a landscape increasingly defined by transience and consumption, where historical memory and cultural continuity struggle against the bulldozer of development, Nick's search for chemical transcendence reads as an almost predictable response.

No es sorprendente – not surprising – that young people seek escape when their physical environment offers so little genuine connection.

The novel offers powerful insights into Nick's perspective during his hospital recovery. Sammartino contrasts the ancient permanence of distant mountains with the disposable architecture of modern Phoenix, suggesting that Nick's attraction to substances might connect to a search for intensity and meaning in an environment that often feels temporary and bland.

This portrayal resonates with what many of us working in community support roles have witnessed. The epidemic of addiction in our Southwestern communities cannot be separated from questions of meaning, belonging, and connection to place.

When we replace desert paths with parking lots and mutual aid networks with big box stores, is it any wonder our young people seek chemical solutions to existential problems?

Sammartino avoids simplistic moral judgments about Nick's addiction, instead presenting it as a complex response to both personal and environmental factors. The novel's portrayal of recovery is equally nuanced—not a straightforward journey toward wholeness, but a series of delicate steps forward, sometimes interrupted by setbacks backward. For those of us who have supported loved ones through recovery, this rings absolutely true.

Father and Son: A Borderlands Relationship
At its heart, Last Acts is a father-son story exploring the complicated terrain of male relationships across generations. With his failing gun shop and desperate commercial schemes, David Rizzo embodies a version of American masculinity—one defined by self-reliance, business success, and emotional stoicism. His son Nick represents both the continuation and rejection of this legacy, struggling to find his own path while carrying his father's expectations and disappointments.

What makes their relationship especially resonant for readers in the Southwest is how Sammartino frames their conflict within our region's specific challenges. The gun shop itself serves as a powerful metaphor—a business centered on protection and self-defense that paradoxically leaves its owner vulnerable and isolated.

Qué ironía más profunda – what profound irony – that Rizzo's dedication to selling weapons has left him essentially defenseless against economic forces beyond his control.

Throughout the novel, Rizzo grapples with the uncomfortable irony of his situation—a man who has spent years selling protection to strangers while failing to protect what matters most: his relationship with his son.

This contradiction captures the novel's nuanced exploration of masculinity in crisis. Rizzo has followed a traditional script of male success – entrepreneurship, self-sufficiency, emotional restraint – only to find himself failing by these very measures. His desperate plan to use his son's near-death experience as marketing material represents the ultimate corruption of family bonds by market logic, yet Sammartino somehow maintains our sympathy for this profoundly flawed father.

What resonated most with me as a Chicano reader was how the novel explores intergenerational relationships against the backdrop of changing social landscapes. Like many fathers and sons in our communities, Rizzo and Nick must navigate not just personal differences but shifting cultural terrain.

The Arizona that shaped Rizzo's expectations and ambitions is disappearing, while Nick comes of age in a more precarious, disconnected environment. Their struggle to communicate across this divide mirrors many families' challenges in our rapidly transforming borderlands.

Finding Hope in Harsh Landscapes
Despite its unflinching portrayal of addiction, economic struggle, and environmental degradation, Last Acts ultimately offers measured hope—not the facile optimism of Hollywood endings, but something more tenuous and true—the possibility that authentic connection might still be possible even in damaged landscapes.

Late in the novel, Sammartino crafts moments of quiet connection between father and son, often set against the backdrop of Arizona's natural landscape. As the day's light fades and the distant mountains shift in color, we witness small but significant steps toward genuine communication between Rizzo and Nick. These understated scenes of tentative reconnection capture what I found most valuable about Sammartino's novel – its suggestion that healing, while never complete or perfect, remains possible through authentic recognition of shared vulnerability.

En fin, that's what sustains our communities despite development's onslaught and addiction's ravages: our capacity to see each other clearly and stand together in brutal truths.

A Desert Blooming
As I close Sammartino's book and gaze out at my Three Sisters garden—corn, beans, and squash supporting each other as they have in this desert for thousands of years—I'm reminded that resilience takes many forms.

Last Acts offers no easy solutions to the challenges facing our Southwestern communities: addiction, unsustainable development, economic precarity, and familial disconnection. What it does provide is a deep human engagement with these issues, grounded in the specific textures and contradictions of contemporary Arizona.

Sammartino's debut offers valuable insights for readers seeking to understand the complex realities of the modern Southwest beyond tourist brochures and political simplifications. For those who call this complicated region home, it provides a mirror that reflects both our struggles and our enduring capacity for connection despite everything working to keep us isolated.

Last Acts is not an easy read, but like the desert itself, its apparent harshness conceals unexpected depth and beauty for those willing to look beyond surfaces. Sammartino has created characters who will stay with readers long after the final page – flawed, struggling humans doing their imperfect best in a landscape that both challenges and sustains them.

Como decimos en mi comunidad, the desert teaches us that life persists even in the most unlikely places. Sammartino's novel honors this truth while refusing to flinch from the very real damage we inflict on our landscapes and each other. For this Chicano librarian and activist, that honest reckoning makes Last Acts essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the contemporary Southwest in all its contradictory beauty.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a bit weird. It doesn't have a conclusion per se. Not sure I liked the style of this book.

[Leslie Zemeckis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like a Sam Shepherd family drama filled with humor - Rizzo owns a gun store his son Nick is an addict and dies - briefly - when he returns to life the two make a fortune off a commercial pledging to donate a portion of gun sales to rehabs … sad, quirky,

[Arpad Nagy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Last Acts by Alex Sammartino. An Audiobook Review.
I read recently that the "Big Five" traditional publishing houses send 4,500 books into the market each year, and when adding e-books, that number skyrockets to 450,000 titles. That's a heap of folks pitching as authors seeking the elusive "Best Seller" status.
With that smorgasbord of literature, finding a good read from the buffet line can be challenging. I rely on recommendations and reviews for most of my reading, both physical and audiobooks. That is partly why I write reviews. We all have limited time for reading, quelled by work or simple exhaustion from managing our tiny space in this mad world and wasting our time is a sin.
Outside of a few trusted writer-reviewers, I also shuffle between podcasts. The "Writers on Writing" podcast is generally solid gold for recommendations when searching for a new fiction read. The podcast also offers the bonus feature of hearing from the authors discussing the book, their methods, and inspirations.
Writers on Writing sent me Happiness Falls and Hello, Beautiful, both excellent reads. After listening to the recent episode featuring Alex Sammartino discussing his debut novel, Last Acts, I was intrigued enough to order the audiobook on Audible.
The interview with Sammartino was interesting, the review blurbs encouraging, and the plot centered on a father-son relationship appealing. The slightly over six hours read time meant it wasn't an overwhelming obligation.
Last Acts is described as "hilarious and wrenching" by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "Irreverent" by the Chicago Review of Books, "Wholly American novel about salvation by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and "Honest, highwire, virtuosic writing that summons up the world with all its charms and hazards," as well as being named an NYT "Editors Choice."
The best thing about Last Acts is the author's agent. I don't know if I would seek the agent's name to avoid their representation or to enlist that agent because, apparently, they can sell anything to a publishing house.
As for Sammartino, his penchant for short, specific detail-laden chapters—not paragraphs—chapters, I believe, was an attempt to channel the voice of Stephen King with the skill of Hemingway's brevity. Unfortunately, the author missed on both accounts and what should have been brushstrokes of colour on the canvas is instead a bludgeoning hammer of boredom.
The story revolves around the father-duo of David and Nick Rizzo. The elder, David, owns a gun shop in Arizona, while the son, Nick, appears after surviving a heroin overdose that takes him to the beyond and back.
As the story slogs along, David and Nick are reunited, both trying to save the other from the vices and sins of guns and drugs in America.
During one such occurrence, events conspire to bring the elder's awareness to modern-day social networks. Sammartino writes Tweets on the relevant topic. The author doesn't merely add a few Twitter-accurate opinions but pages of them. Later, Sammartino does the same with news clips about the current event, causing controversy and conflict in the story. Again, these quips are not limited to headlines and bylines but list publications, publication times, and journalist names and networks.
Sammartino, convinced this tactic is a mint and novel approach, goes for a third kick at the can, listing web ads complete with the "doubleyou, doubleyou, doubleyou dot Advertiser. Again, not for a few paragraphs, but pages. This continued for so long that my patience failed, and I hit the skip ahead 30 seconds' button. It continued, and once more, I skipped ahead. Again, 30 seconds later, the sin of meaningless words continued.
This approach gives the book the pacing of towing a wagon of rocks up a mountainside, providing the reader with an entirely new appreciation of the word "mundane."
Does something prophetic and beautifully tragic occur in the story? Was there a universal truth about father-son relationships revealed? Did the son finally make his father proud? Did the father see his son finally reach his potential?
I can't tell you. Not because I want to protect you from spoilers but because I genuinely do not know. After 4-1/2 hours of listening to narrator Peter Simonelli do his best to drag me through the slough of Sammartino's writing, I punched the stop button on the audio and pulled the pin on the story. I simply didn't care anymore.
It's rare that I won't finish a book once I start it. I would say one in fifteen books misses the mark and fails to be compelling enough to suffer the slow burn for a dramatic turn, but in Last Acts, abandoning the story was a mercy killing.
My rating for Last Acts is 1 out of 5 stars, the single credit given for writing and completing a novel regardless of its quality. I cannot recommend this book, and if it was on your radar, I suggest considering one of the other 449,000 available titles.

[Matthew Minicucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette (January 21st, 2024): https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/books...

Fairly early on in Alexander Sammartino’s debut novel “Last Acts,” Nick Rizzo, recovering heroin addict and son of gun store owner David Rizzo, appears in a commercial for his father’s business in an attempt to resuscitate his (and his father’s) failing prospects. The younger Rizzo, almost manic in his uncertainty of what to do, stares directly into the camera and says “As a recovering heroin addict myself, I feel grateful just to be here, talking. That’s right: I might have never taken another breath again. But I came back to life, and now I’m here. In front of you. In a gun shop.”

Sammartino, who received his MFA from Syracuse, has done something in this debut work I didn’t quite think was possible: he’s written a truly secular novel about salvation. Mind you, there’s a number of choices Sammartino makes that smack of a certain Judeo-Christian religiosity, including a tendency to refer to the elder Rizzo [David] as only “Rizzo” and the younger as “Nick Rizzo,” often with the entirety of his name present in the text.
“Last Acts”

Among the many things this does to a reader is start to elide the two Rizzos; an inevitability, really, given the nature of their trials and tribulations in this book. This (reformed) Catholic school boy had a hard time not seeing the multiple-persons-in-one-spiritual-entity-ness of this choice, especially in the second half of the book.

But Sammartino has created a wholly American novel about salvation in “Last Acts,” specifically, a book that encounters the objects of salvation — quintessentially American objects like guns, opioids, and, of course, money. Nick Rizzo, a character whose literal rising from the dead is chronicled in the first few sentences of the book, seems to function very much as a stand-in for all the children of this novel (and its dusty, deserted but also hyper-inflated setting).

Sammartino doesn’t shy away from this in any of the choices he makes here. Nor does he shy away from a very open and very contemporary experimentation with genre over the course of the novel.

There are entire chapters of email spam advertisements, social media posts, and a particularly brilliant chapter formatted as a commercial script, except that all the participants begin to move away from the set standards of what’s on the page and begin to argue with each other in the script itself. All of which creates a moment which reads almost as if television, that thing all the parents of my generation warned would destroy us, can barely contain the rage between those generations.

“Last Acts” brings all of this to us with a dogged, perhaps even borderline insane, attention to detail. The sentences and paragraphs are almost muggy in their unrelenting mass, sometimes making me wonder if a long, deep breath needed to be taken away from the book in front of my face just to continue on. Which is ironic given so much of this book happens in the sprawling and failing suburbia of the southwestern United States.

Though, just because it’s desert doesn’t mean it’s deserted, as the text finds a rash of characters, both young and old, affected by an economy that doesn’t work, a housing crisis that shows up at everyone’s doorstep with offers to buy or refinance, and, most importantly, a plague of gun violence that has no intentions of abating.

And make no mistake, this might be the American novel of gun violence. Which, in turn, might mean that it is very much an American novel, as we are undeniably defined as a nation by the very fact of this. As, of course, are the characters at the heart of this book.

Sammartino has written, in many ways, an unbearable novel. And I say that with the greatest affection for it. It concerns itself with the confusion inherent in having a thing vs. saving a thing. Is salvation itself a sort of bearing, a thing to bear, or an actual bear, always pursuing us as we exit. It’s a book that asks the reader, over and over, what we’re willing to sacrifice in the pursuit of those things, those quintessential American objects we think we need to come back to life. In front of you. In a gun shop.

[Pedro L. Fragoso · Rating 3 out of 5]

“You have to relax, Dad. They were very clear about this. Surgery is a—”
“Surgery? Are you kidding me? Surgery? Get me out of here before they figure out where to send the bill. Come on. Hurry up. Toss me in that wheelchair and shove me down the stairs. How did I get here?
Please don’t tell me it was an ambulance? How the hell am I supposed to pay for an ambulance?”
“It’s the helicopter that’s really going to cost us.”
“The what.”
“The helicopter, Dad.”
“I’m sorry Nick it sounds like you keep saying the word helicopter. But I don’t know why you would be using that word.”
“The first ambulance took you to—”
“There were multiple you’re saying. Ambulances? Ambuli? You’re telling me several were involved.”
“Dad, you were working on a house in Apache Junction. You fell off the roof. At first they thought it was just some broken bones and a concussion so the ambulance drove you to—I forget the name of the hospital.”
“What does the name have to do with anything?”
“That’s right: Dignity Health. Anyway, one of the nurses there noticed how high your blood pressure was, they did some scans, you have a blocked carotid artery. Like almost completely blocked. They weren’t sure how you were even walking around, let alone climbing on roofs. They did the medevac helicopter to get you to HonorHealth for the emergency surgery.”
“And you didn’t stop them? You didn’t think to say your father would prefer the scenic route?”
“I was still at work. I’d gotten a few calls from random numbers, but I never answer random numbers. They make me nervous.”
“That’s great. That’s really wonderful. You spend your whole life looking at that screen waiting for something important to magically announce itself, and then when this consequential event occurs, you’re too scared to answer the call.”
“I get that you’re angry, Dad. Trust me, I was angry too when I heard they couldn’t land and had to fly back to Dignity—but it’s a miracle you’re alive right now. Truly.”
“They couldn’t land.”
“HonorHealth had a lockdown drill happening. But the pilot wasn’t told, so they were flying around HonorHealth, waiting for a signal to land, and eventually the pilot decided it was in your best interest to fly back.”
“My best interest? If this guy wanted to do what was in my best interest he should’ve pushed me out of the helicopter.”
“Honestly I’m surprised you’re not in more pain. Four broken ribs. Four. One of the ribs was less than an inch away from puncturing your lung.”
“Only I would get so lucky. Helicopters, ambulances, surgeries. I’ll never get out from under this. It’s over. This is worse than death. How will I work? The debt, the injuries. How will I afford to eat? I would be lucky to die. If the roof had only been a few feet higher. If there’d been some pickaxes on the ground where I fell. If the first ambulance had driven a little faster, sent a rib through my lung.”

Fiction from the United States, especially “literary fiction” from the country's heartland, always serves as some chronicle of a truly alien planet, a devasted wasteland of misery, loneliness and loss, with sometimes a smattering of grace thanks to the possibility of love.

“To market is not merely to sell. To market is to generate a system in which any form of transaction, including a sale, can occur. Therefore, the market is a liberated world, an atmosphere of relentless exchange, where one finds it impossible to conceive of the opposite of a transaction.”

[Edwin Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

LAST ACTS, by Alexander Sammartino, follows David Rizzo and his son, Nick, as they both look for answers as to what each of them will do with the next chapter in their respective lives. Nick has returned home after recovering from an overdose and eager to get back on his feet, while David sees his son's return as opportunity to save his failing gun store. Plans go awry and this reconnected father-son duo has to figure out how to overcome all problems that keep them from happiness.
The reader immediately is attached to and pulls for David, while Nick comes off as a lost soul who hasn't found a way to support himself, let alone stop using other people for his own gains. As the book progresses, though, the reader, in spite of all his mistakes, starts to pull for Nick and hopes that he can succeed and make himself and his father happy. The only way I can think of to describe Sammartino's writing style is thoughtfully blunt. He gives the reader what they need to understand and enjoy the scene before them, but there is very little extra. There is also some chapters that aren't pushing plot, but rather provides context to deepen the understanding of the characters and the situations. There were a few times, though, that I found myself searching for clarity within a chapter and I struggled not just in comprehension, but also in purpose.
LAST ACTS is gritty, funny, and memorable. There is no sugarcoating of characters or events, and therefore felt very real, like these things could happen to any of us.
Thank you to Scribner, Alexander Sammartino, and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!