City of Margins

by William Boyle

In City of Margins , the lives of several lost souls intersect in Southern Brooklyn in the early 1990s. There's Donnie Parascandolo, a disgraced ex-cop with blood on his hands; Ava Bifulco, a widow whose daily work grind is her whole life; Nick, Ava's son, a grubby high school teacher who dreams of a shortcut to success; Mikey Baldini, a college dropout who's returned to the old neighborhood, purposeless and drifting; Donna Rotante, Donnie's ex-wife, still reeling from the suicide of their teenage son; Mikey's mother, Rosemarie, also a widow, who hopes Mikey won't fall into the trap of strong arm work; and Antonina Divino, a high school girl with designs on breaking free from Brooklyn. Uniting them are the Mikey's old man, killed over a gambling debt, and Donnie and Donna's poor son, Gabe. These characters cross paths in unexpected ways, guided by coincidence and the pull of blood. There are new things to be found in the rubble of their lives, too. The promise of something different beyond the barriers that have been set out for them. This is a story of revenge and retribution, of facing down the ghosts of the past, of untold desires, of yearning and forgiveness and synchronicity, of the great distance of lives lived in dangerous proximity to each other. City of Margins is a Technicolor noir melodrama pieced together in broken glass. Praise for William Boyle 'Boyle's characters are vividly drawn and painfully real. Fans of literary crime novelists such as George Pelecanos and Richard Price will be highly rewarded' - Publishers Weekly 'Boyle has quietly proven he can take on any number of kinds of crime fiction, from a screwball farce to a hardboiled noir to a heartfelt examination of lonely people whose lives cross' - Crime Reads

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Noir, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Crime, The United States Of America

352 pages, Paperback

First published March 3, 2020

About the author

William Boyle is the author of eight books set in and around the southern Brooklyn neighborhood of Gravesend, where he was born and raised. His most recent novel is SAINT OF THE NARROWS STREET, available in February 2025 from Soho Crime in the US and March 2025 from No Exit in the UK. His books have been nominated for the Hammett Prize, the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award in the UK, and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in France, and they have been included on best-of lists in Washington Post, CrimeReads, and more. He currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh .....this book was **GOOD**! I thoroughly enjoyed it....set in Brooklyn,
between 1992 - 1994.
It was dark...
It was gruesome...
It was funny...
It was heartfelt...
It was GREAT - ( hanging on to every word great), STORYTELLING!

“City of Margins” is linked, enmeshed, and intertwined stories—the complementary chapters include a varied-vivid-cast of ‘sad-sacks’ and ‘sinister’ characters. The characters feel ‘real’....( definitely memorable). I cared deeply for them.

Donnie Parascandolo, was a cop until he was fired for punching out his captain. His two buddies, ( drinking buddies), are Sottile and Pags.
Donnie’s aggressive behavior, and heaving drinking, started after, his son, Gabe, hung himself....which lead to a divorce with his wife, Donna.
Donnie started working for the gangster Big Time Tommy.
Several of Donnie’s jobs required physically abusing others.
Donnie even he hit a 20 year old guy, Mikey Baldini, with a ‘bat’ when Mikey was trying to get it on with an underage girl named Antonia Divino one evening in a park.

Mikey was a college drop out - he had a chin tattoo....which he later covered with a full beard. He had stretched ear lobes- was skinny as skinny is - and lived at home with his mother, Rosemarie Baldini.
Rosemarie was 46 years old... her husband had died two years ago from suicide ( jumping off a bridge, leaving a huge gambling debt -to a Big Time Tommy).

Here’s a sample scene between Mikey, ( tomorrow was his 21st birthday), and his mother...( comic/tragic)....that made me laugh.
Rosemarie tells Mikey, that his Uncle Alberto, was coming to dinner tomorrow. She’s making his favorite foods, ravioli with chicken parm and garlic bread. Uncle Alberto was bringing cannoli.
Mikey says:
“Who’re you feeding here?”
“Uncle Alberto likes to eat”.
“You should bring all this food to a homeless shelter”.
“Homeless Shelter? What’re are you saying? It’s your birthday. These are your favorites. You can at least eat on your birthday, can’t you?”
“Feed people who need to be fed, that’s what I’m saying”.
“You need to be feed!” EAT!!!
Boy, does Mikey ever eat... I was laughing out loud at what follows next.
.....(note: I’ve no appetite for macaroni). Funny scene....( several scenes were a giggling riot).

Mikey was almost never hungry anymore. Rosemarie worried he was getting too skinny. Mikey doesn’t think his mother knows he drinks much, but she does. MOM’S HAVE EYES BEHIND THERE HEADS!

Several of the scenes that had me laughing were between mom & son.

Here’s another scene that had me laughing between a single mother,
Ava Bifulo, ( her husband died of pancreatic cancer a couple years ago) and her son, Nick.
.....[note: minutes before Ava came walking in the door with a guy name Don, the same ex-cop, Don, from earlier linking-chapters,
Nick was having phone sex with his longtime girlfriend, Alice....but Nick is in no hurry to marry]
Nick and Alice were both teachers - teaching at the same school.
Here’s the scene that had me laughing again:
Small talk was taking place while Ava prepared dinner for Don, and Nick.
Ava says to Don...
“He ( referring to Nick), still doesn’t want to get married. I tell him, ‘you better be careful’. She’s not going to be young forever. You’re not going to be young forever”.
“What can I say?, Nick says. I like living at home with my mother. I like the home-cooking”.
“He can eat, God bless him, Ava says, but he stay so skinny. How about you, Don? Do you like to eat?”
“I could take it or leave it, Don says
“Take or leave eating?, Nick says.”
“You know, I do it. I grab a roll here a slice of pizza there. I don’t really think about it”.
“To each his own, Ava says”.
The scene continues....( pathetically sad and funny)....

Antonino, only 15 years old, who we met earlier when she was in the park one night with Mikey, wants to go to college and leave Brooklyn. She has an odd relationship with an older man name Ralph, who gives her money to set aside for college. He takes her to dinner and drives Antonino around - but thankfully he never abused her sexually or emotionally. Ralph actually saw Antonino like a daughter.
There was a sadness about their connecting together - for both of them....yet, the longing seemed to fill a void for loneliness.

Donnie started going by the name Don, after he was fired.
Donna took back her maiden name, Rotante...(Donna still lived in the same neighborhood - close by her ex-husband).
Both Don and Donna were seriously hurting and distraught from their son’s suicide.
Don’s antidote to the grief of Gabe, which he didn’t want to talk about, was working as a gangster for Big Time Tommy.

There’s a lot going on with all these characters.... surprisingly very easy to follow...
Think of ‘The Sopranos’....a bunch of Italian dudes, ....( some good, some very bad)....crime and corruption, lost souls, hurting, looking for revenge and love.
Think of women who are affected by these guys...( ex husbands, sons, and friends).

Somehow, in this textured crime novel...I got the feeling that goodness prevails.
It takes one heck of a talented author for me to feel so much warmth - in a novel with violence - which I did - for both the good guys and losers.

Love, loss, crime, and more love....
William Boyle’s novel is emotionally felt....haunting, yet utterly real....superbly written with a marvelous tantalizing thriller soul.

Thank you netgalley, Pegasus Books, and William Boyle.

[Kemper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free advance copy of this for review.

Back in the 90s Donnie Parascandolo was a disgraced ex-cooooooppppppp….

I offer my sincere apologies to Bojack Horseman, Grouplove, and William Boyle for that one.

Starting over.... In a Brooklyn neighborhood during the ‘90s a group of people impact each other in various ways. Donnie was a dirty cop whose son committed suicide, and his wife Donna left him in the aftermath. As part of his grieving process Donnie once hit Mikey Baldini with a baseball bat for trying to hook up with the underage Antonina, and then later when Donnie went to collect a gambling debt from Mikey’s father, Donnie ended up killing the man. A few years after that Mikey has dropped out of college and lives with his clingy mother, Rosemarie, who is still grieving her husband. Donnie has been fired from the cops and works for the local mob guy. Ava is another neighborhood widow living with her alcoholic son Nick who works as a high school teacher but dreams of being a writer.

A couple of chance encounters bring a few of these people together, and the results are….not great for everyone.

As you can tell from that description there’s a lot going on in this book. Even though it’s not that long the characters and their backstories make for a dense story that explores how these people have already been connected, and how them making new connections with each other triggers a string of unintended consequences. The strong character work makes you understand everybody’s behavior and choices even if those decisions are frequently bad.

Grief is a big factor here with several characters mourning a dead loved one, and their reactions are varied. Donnie has lost his job as a cop and seems to content to live on booze and cigarettes in his increasingly filthy house. His ex-wife, Donna, has retreated to a shabby apartment where she spends most of her time listening to her record collection and rereading her son’s suicide note. Mikey is completely adrift with no idea of what to even try to do even as his mother is torn between wanting him to get his act together vs. wanting him to stay as her needy son. Ava has become all about her work at a nursing home although she doesn’t enjoy it, and she worries about Nick who seems to have come down with a terminal case of arrested development in the way that he is content to stay with her.

All of this character work is done extremely well by William Boyle, and like his other books, there’s an incredibly rich sense of place and the people. You feel like you know this Brooklyn neighborhood as well as its residents by the end of the book, and he also did a great job with the ‘90s setting by making it seem familiar to someone who lived throughout without ever descending to the nostalgia porn levels. I also caught a few connections to his other books so this feels like getting more history on a place I’ve visited before.

Overall, it’s the epitome of what I look for in a character based crime novel. After reading his three previous books I’ve said that Boyle was quickly becoming one of my favorite writers, and now he sits high on that list.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the first page of City of Margins, you know you've found something special. Well, to be honest, you've struck a huge vein of gold. Boyle offers us a gritty Brooklyn crime fiction set in the nineties but somehow echoing books and movies set in earlier eras.

You've got the dirty corrupt cops, including one so twisted they kicked him off the force, Donnie. And Donnie, like any great Noir character, has only just begun to travel through the circles of hell. His marriage didn't survive his teenage son's suicide and he's little more than a mean-spirited enforcer for a loan shark, even prone to throwing the marks off bridges. His ex-wife Donna is practically a shut-in with her stacks of record albums. You got the family torn apart by the father's apparent suicide off a bridge and a family debt to a loan shark that won't go away. Mikey's going nowhere fast, but he's somehow linked up with Donnie and Donna too. Meanwhile, Donnie plays Good Samaritan to Ava whose loser son is planning to write a novel or movie treatment about neighborhood character Donnie.

All these people stuck in dead end lives going nowhere, never leaving their neighborhood and all linked by strange connections. It's a soap opera, gritty Noir style and every page is worth devouring. Well-paced, well-written. Done right.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

We enter the pre-gentrified Brooklyn, the Brooklyn of the early '90's, with a bang. Boyle manages to keep all his characters visible by giving them each a point of view and history, however the book is really plot-driven more than by character, but the intertwining lives of these people keeps the pages turning however improbable the connections.

[Mary Lins · Rating 2 out of 5]

“City of Margins”, by William Boyle, is immediately action packed, HOWEVER, in between the action scenes there is a lot of mundane description – like how someone makes a pot of coffee – that seemed unnecessary to me, unless it’s “stage direction” and Boyle is REALLY (I suspect) writing a screenplay here.

You’ll need to have a high tolerance for violence for this novel/(future film). I guess it can be considered in the crime/gangster/noir genres, but to my mind it is at its best as a set of interconnected character studies, and can be considered historical (1990s Brooklyn) fiction.

Full disclosure: people will say that if you love Scorsese films you will love this novel. They are probably correct.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a showy writer, Boyle tells of the Italians he grew up observing in straightforward fashion. He doesn't indulge in romanticized working class figures, he refuses to sentimentalize the streets, he won't deliver hamfisted noir dialogue. He's not concerned with winning you over with cliche or cute.

Coming from a Catholic blue-collar background myself, if a bit older than many entering these pages, I recognized certain "tells" in the habits, mindsets, and dialogue. Although I'd never have expected a creator with an Irish surname to depict, seemingly without effort, a rhythm and thrust of this sturdy, (in)famously clannish contingent, Boyle appears--I admit my own unfamiliarity--to deliver accurate and calibrated renderings of how these put-upon people think, speak, and brood as they seek justice.

The challenge lies in the setup, for a chiasmus too neatly superimposed a tit-for-tat pattern that fits. I squirmed at its application as the gears turning in Boyle's mechanism could be heard behind the well-paced conversations and inner monologues of his cast. Maybe it's how thrillers work; I haven't read enough of 'em. I was willing to keep going, but it's a bit less than full four stars. Rounded up for the less grating delivery of recognizable folks caught up in carrying out score-settling amid darkness.

His strength comes in characters. These believable men and women (and he's comfortable with both) possess flaws, resent dismissal, plot revenge, seek comfort, and bicker as they eat, drink, toil, and flirt. I think, given the close-mouthed and tight-knit ethos of his Brooklyn families, many broken by death, betrayal, and vengeance, that some aspects of his storyline demand suspension of disbelief, for rumor and informants, gossip and coincidence, all connive. But a forgivable concession for such craft.

I never heard of Boyle, and only found this by algorithms, as crime fiction isn't my usual. Setting this before the omnipresent cellphone helps, for as with horror flicks, getting rid of a lifeline's imperative. The late 1990s timeframe, therefore, takes advantage of this last period when ordinary folks bent on payback could expect, even if amateurs, getting away with murder without a camera or GPS tracker...

[Lorilin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh man, this is an incredibly depressing book. It's so well written. The dialogue is fantastic--I can picture the back-and-forths between characters like they're standing right in front of me. I felt like I was watching a movie. But wow, it's dark. I really wanted to hate a few of these characters, but, in the end, I just felt bad for them. For all of them. It helped put my own life in perspective, honestly. Even in my darkest moments, I'm not living like this, you know? Ultimately, City of Margins is a good book, but I'm very glad to be done with it.

[Dave Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

As close as you can get to reading an Altman film.

[Maine Colonial · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a free advance reviewing copy.

I loved Boyle’s A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself, so I was enthusiastic about reading this. This is a very different book, as it turns out. I considered quitting it halfway through, but I thought I should give Boyle the benefit of the doubt, so I read to the end. Around the last quarter to a third of the book the connections between the many characters came together in an action-packed and inevitable-feeling way, but it was an awfully long time to wait.

This is a book about lost souls, indeed. But it seemed to me that while the male characters chose to be losers, the females were dragged down because of the men they married and otherwise associated with.

Yes, this is a gritty, darkly realistic tale, evoking the south Brooklyn of the 90s, a neighborhood of lower middle-class Italians who all know each other from which Catholic church and school they went to. (Think Saturday Night Fever, only a few years later.) And yes, I can see this being turned into a movie of the Scorsese type. But for me it was just depressing to spend hours in the company of these men, hoping the women would leave them behind. For me, that’s the key difference between this novel and A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself. Both books are New York based, gritty and violent, but the women in AFIAFYGY are fiercely alive and don’t put up with aggravation from any man. Does that mean everything works out great for them? Not at all, but their journey was so much more relatable to me.

[Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another doozy by Boyle. When you set aside everything you had been planning to read and dig into this instead, reading in a heat and maybe sort of skipping ahead in a chapter to make sure that certain characters are going to be okay despite the fact that someone's just shown up at their house with a gun.

[Karen ReadsALot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Accurately detailed day to day life in Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. Lower middle class people who never get out of debt and loss of loved ones and their dreams is sadly overwhelming. Just scratch the surface and anger, vengeance and violence emerge.

[Ross Cumming · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Boyle is from Brooklyn and like his previous novels this one is also set in that same borough of New York that he knows and writes about so well. This time the setting is the Bay Ridge area of Brooklyn where he tells the story of several families, who all live in close proximity to each other and are thrown together in a 'soap opera' of a tale due to a few random incidents.
Donnie Parascandolo is a disgraced ex-cop who was thrown off the force for punching his Police Captain and now works full time for Big Time Tommy Ficarola, doing mostly strong arm stuff. Donnie's ex-wife Donna Rotante left him soon after their 15 year old son Gabe committed suicide but she still lives in the neighbourhood. Rosemarie Baldini is widowed, after her husband too apparently committed suicide because of his gambling debts that he couldn't repay to Big Time Tommy. Her twenty year old college drop out son, Mikey, resides with her and she is still paying off the 25k debt which she inherited on her husband's death. Ava Bifulco is also a widow and lives with her schoolteacher son Nick, who dreams and fantasises about one day becoming a screenwriter like his local neighbourhood hero Phil Puzzo. A series of chance meetings between some of these characters change their lives forever and leads to potential fatal consequences for others.
Boyle's novels are basically crime novels but for me they are always more about the characters than they are about the crimes. The circumstances the characters find themselves in often leads them to commit a crime or the crime acts as a catalyst for a change in their lives that seemed impossible before. Also the crimes committed in this novel are mostly not planned but happen spontaneously due to the predicament the particular character finds themselves in. Unlike most novels there is not really a main protagonist, although Donnie is the character whose actions impact on all the others the most, this is more an ensemble piece where all the characters have equal billing.
The novel starts off really well and I got really hooked on the characters and the storyline but I did think there was a little spell in the middle where I thought it went a little flat but it really picks up pace again towards the end and the Epilogue really ties the story together.

[Mysticpt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this one, I think it's his best book since Gravesend. Lots of characters in this 90s Noir tale that takes place in Brooklyn featuring dirty cops, restless school teachers, healthcare workers, students and dropouts. Their lives intersect and come together in interesting ways. Plus as a bonus I got introduced to the music of Garland Jeffreys who I was unaware of and I'm currently enjoying. 4 + Stars

[Rhian Eleri · Rating 3 out of 5]

If Tarantino wrote books.... this is what you would get! Im a sucker for a gangsta movie! And with pulp fiction being up there as one of my faves, I got those same vibes from City Of Margins.
I was also hooked on the Sopranos recently and It really helped with some of the language used in this book.

The first part concentrates on intriduction to the many characters. They all live in Brooklyn New York and at girdt it seems they have no connection. Soon though, it becomes apparent that what brings them together is crime grief and violent pasts.

I loved Ava Bifulco, I thought she was the only character who showed genuine feelings. Falling fo Don Parascando was probably the last thing she needed, but it gave us the grit of this story and an insight into his character as well as Ava's.

Enjoyed the quick sharp story telling here. I was right there with them, as even doing the 'accents'. This is one world Id love to delve deeper into. I'm so intrigued by the lives of these people.

[Kelly Ford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterful storytelling, with that perfect mix of plot and deep character development that makes me swoon.

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 4 out of 5]

South Brooklyn in 1992 is not the Brooklyn of today; far from it. Today's Brooklyn is the 'new Manhattan'. South Brooklyn in 1992 is an Italian neighborhood, primarily lower middle class, and everyone is likely to be just one or two degrees of separation from others in the neighborhood and the Italian mob. The neighborhood picture isn't pretty. Houses are rundown, people work at jobs that provide little if any fulfillment, families are struggling to get by and some have the mob at their heels trying to get gambling debts paid or taking revenge for something or other. Many grown children live with their parents and the two wonderful things about this neighborhood are the bakeries and the smells wafting from the kitchens - lots of wonderful home cooked Italian food.

The novel is divided into interconnected chapters, each one about a different person living in the neighborhood. The book covers a period of two years, 1992 - 1994. The prologue opens with Donnie Parascandolo, a disgraced police officer who has been fired for punching his captain in the face. Donnie has a sadistic streak running through him and is an alcoholic. He hangs with two buddies, Sottile and Pags, also cops. Donnie and his wife divorced after their son Gabe took his own life when he was 15. Donnie tries not to think about Gabe's suicide. His ex-wife, Donna, moved out and changed her last name back to her maiden name, Rotante. Donnie is grateful that she didn't take his pension, the house, or anything of material value from him. She took her record player and some records. She just wanted out. Gabe's death haunts her. Donnie now works for a local gangster, Big Time Tommy. Some of these jobs involve threats, other jobs do more bodily harm to those that Big Tommy is unhappy with.

Mikey Baldini, a college dropout, lives with his mother Rosemary. Mikey is listless and has little if any purpose. He has no job and no real ambition. While he was in college, he hung out with some 'crust punks' (whatever they are) and got a chin tattoo that is a vertical line surrounded by dots. He also has ear plugs which have stretched holes in his ears so large that he can fit his fingers through them. Rosemary worries about him and treats him like a child. Mikey's father, an inveterate gambler with a large debt to Big Tommy, 'disappeared'. His body is found washed ashore and the family assumes he took his own life because of his gambling problems. Rosemary knows that Mikey drinks too much, is lazy, and spends his time wastefully. She blames herself for letting him go upstate to college. She should have made him go to a nearby school.

Ava Bifulco, a 51 year old widow, works in a nursing home. She drives a wreck of a car that has just broken down on the Belt Parkway. A good samaritan named Don stops to help her and gives her a lift home. Ava's son Nick lives at home with his mother. He is a teacher who doesn't seem to care much for his appearance. He has a beautiful girlfriend who teaches at the same school he does. All the male teachers covet her as do the students. She is 'that' teacher. Nick is in no rush to marry her. He prefers to be taken care of by his mother who he is always worrying about. He has vague dreams of writing a hit screenplay though he's not known to follow through with things.

Antonina Divino is a high school student who dyes her hair different shades of the rainbow regularly. She wears combat boots and overalls to attain a certain look that goes well with her beauty. She likes to listen to tape mixes that her friend Lizzie makes for her. She smokes on her fire escape and sneaks out of the house at night to go partying with Lizzie. She has an unusual relationship with Ralph, an older man and a friend of Donnie's. Ralph takes Antonina for rides in his Caddie, they drive around different neighborhoods, go to a diner, and he gives her money that he wants her to set aside for college. There is no hanky panky going on between them. Antonina believes that she is like a daughter to Ralph.

As this group of people find themselves serendipitously interconnected with one another, the drama rises many notches. William Boyle knows how to write with a seriousness that brought tears to my eyes. He can also flavor the story with humor that cracked me up. The characters all came alive for me and despite some of the unconventional relationships, I believed them all. I rooted for some and hoped that others would get their just desserts. I certainly plan on reading more of his books, and soon.

[Chris Pavone · Rating 5 out of 5]

A noir cast of characters collide in Gravesend, Brooklyn, in the early 90s, with dirty cops and petty criminals and half-wiseguys and long-suffering wives and drifting teenagers plus a suicidal one. For most of the book, the characters’ families circle around one another, then ultimately collide in a few related murders. All the plot lines can exist independently but they're also all interdependent, which is tremendous fun, albeit a bit far-fetched. I also think there are a few too many characters in this novel, especially with more than one newly sexually awakened middle-aged woman with a grown child. But these are petty complaints compared to the characters and language and dialogue, all absolutely sparking.

MARGINS is also a vivid glimpse into a very different Brooklyn, not that long ago, before NYC's most populous borough became a tourist attraction and a place to which privileged youths moved after graduating from liberal-arts colleges across the country. Boyle's Gravesend is reminiscent of the Brooklyn in which I grew up during the 1970s and '80s, a sprawling working-class city that was divided up largely along ethnic lines into distinct neighborhoods with local populations where everyone was known, the criminals and cops and wayward teenagers and upstanding citizens; the distinctly urban version of small-town life. I don't idealize this Brooklyn, but I do recognize its idiosyncrasies, and no one I've read is better than Boyle at capturing the suffocating paradox of small-town limitations within the most cosmopolitan of cities.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The setting is an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn during the 1990s. There are dirty cops, low level gangsters and various other mostly lonely and struggling characters whose lives intertwine around money, tragedy, violence, sex and revenge. The author somehow balances outrageous behavior with humanity so that I was able to simultaneously accept the craziness, feel compassion about grim circumstances and enjoy all of the funny quirks present in the plot and personalities of this tale.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book by William Boyle......again! Every book has been a revelation with great noir characters and Brooklyn settings. I used those little binoculars on my map app to walk the streets of Brooklyn and Coney Island with the characters. Great activity during quarantine and perfect for this wonderful book.

[Candace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having enjoyed "The Irishman," one might think one is in the mood for more wiseguys. Set in south Brooklyn in the early 1990s, City of Margins" is the story of men who are drunk all the time, corrupt cops or mobsters, brutal and violent. The women work their asses off, and few have ever left the neighborhood.

There are enough sparks of connection to keep you reading, but finally, you may be tempted, as I was, to skip to the end to see if any one finds any kind of redemption. I'm sure you can imagine how that goes.

Yes, I can see this as a movie, ad maybe a good one. As a novel, it left me feeling like there was something crawling up my back.

Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much better than the last two, though not quite as good as the first. Again, a standalone with characters from previous volumes occasionally making an appearance. This is not a mystery or thriller, though there is havoc and bloodshed and gangsters galore. The characters are not quite as raw as in Gravesend, but have depth. Success, I guess, does take a price. Boyle has big-time backing at this point. Chris Offut, Megan Abbot…, he is being translated into French and German, and teaching in Oxford, Mississippi. I’ll read the next two books (the last out this year), but after a break.

[Jacob Dzik · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is epic and cinematic in every way. He presents characters honestly and doesn’t judge them. And the violence comes as results of what has happened and isn’t forced. He has said John Sayles is a big influence and I can definitely see that here and the way characters and stories connect reminded me of the movie “Lone Star.” Loved every sentence in this book and along with Wallace Stroby’s “Some Die Nameless” this is my favorite book of the year.

[Don Gorman · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3). This is one wild and crazy noir ride. We are back in the Italian hood. Kids, adults, cops, crooks, everyone is misbehaving. And as the sub plots unfold, you can just feel that worlds will collide, and man, do they ever. A really weird and fun excursion. Good stuff.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 fast fun rough and raw ny cop read enjoyable after stuffy reads.

[fleur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love all the different characters and their different stories and how at one point all their stories become one big one and it all makes sense, you want to keep reading
Opbouw van het verhaal is perfect

[Jason Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not at all what I expected. The first half is very slice-of-life sad sack Brooklyn circa 1993, the second half builds to a crackling final fifty or so pages. My first read of Boyle. Won’t be my last.

[David Boddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A noirish crossing of paths....

[Paterson Loarn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was totally absorbed by this book from its jaw-dropping first chapter to the unpredictable finale.

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.

[ThisButterflyWarriorReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

This intense, dark and intriguing novel about the lifes of Italian people in 1980's New York grips you at once.William Boyle has a nack for bringing you in the middle of the story and feeling the emotions of the characters. The story starts with a conversation of 3 cops with some mafiatype side hustle and one of them, Donny, is the red thread throughout the novel. I am impressed with the way I felt like I was truly in the 80s even though I am born in 1987 thanks to the vocabulary and references used by the characters. Everything fits, from the linoleum to the smoking habits, the need to entertain with food for this close community and the fact that it is such a close knit community.

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[Csimplot Simplot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book!!