The End: A Novel

by Salvatore Scibona

An incredible debut and National Book Award-nominated novel—it’s “Memento meets Augie March. Didion meets Hitchcock” (Esquire).

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.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Novels, Literature

336 pages, Paperback

First published May 13, 2008

About the author

He is an award-winning American novelist and short-story writer. He has won awards for both his novels and short stories, and was selected in 2010 as one of The New Yorker "Fiction Writers to Watch: 20 under 40"

Reviews

[Fionnuala]

I imagine, and this book gives permission to imagine, in the sense of cogitate, that if Scibona were asked who he was writing for, he might say, for his characters, or for the previous generations who may have inspired those characters, or maybe for the real-life place that inspired his multi-stranded yet singularly focused story, or for himself.
I would be surprised if he said that the reader was foremost in his mind as he was writing.
That's a pity. I think the writer of a novel, as opposed to a poet, has a duty to the reader and must curb his temptation to indulge himself with obscure layouts, unrealized menace and too many red herrings. Such a writer might argue that life is full of both menace and red herrings and that the overlapping history of any group of people would look complicated no matter how carefully it were plotted, and these points are of course valid concerning real life. The story teller however, must select, from the limitless number of possible details relating to his characters, those necessary to move his plot forward, and he must allow his readers to keep him company all along the way.
So, yes, I think Scibona could have pruned this tale a little, and ordered it differently, but nevertheless, I enjoyed reading it because his writing is like a net. It catches the reader and prevents escape no matter how frustrated we become with the intricacies of his personal take on the big questions: life and death.
And what would have become of 'Moby Dick' if Herman Melville had edited out all the red herrings, sorry white whales...

[SCARABOOKS · Rating 4 out of 5]

E’ un romanzo ambizioso con un taglio epico. E quindi ha i pregi e i difetti che queste caratteristiche comportano. A volte eccede nelle ambizioni, soprattutto sul piano espressivo, ma anche della complessità della struttura del racconto. Su tutto però mi pare prevalga la qualità assoluta della scrittura, la cura stilistica. Tanto per orientare e, come direbbe Gadda “con il dovuto rispetto”, leggendolo mi sono venuti in mente Verga da una parte e John Fante dall’altra. Di peculiare rispetto a questi ha che usa una lingua molto elaborata, con espressioni immaginifiche che fanno fermare il lettore. Frutto probabilmente di decantazioni laboriose, di un lavoro di scavo sulle parole e sulle immagini che vuole evocare.

Per dare un’idea, questo è un albero, nel mondo di Scibona: “Che marchingegno complicato, e solo per catturare la luce. Tutte quelle migliaia di foglie. C’era una foglia per ogni raggio di sole che cadeva. L’albero era una cisterna per la luce.”
A volte dà l'idea di complicare inutilmente cose semplici, ma dietro a questa ricerca stilistica c'è qualcosa di sostanziale. Ed è l'ambizione di cercare nel dettaglio, nel particolare, nel fatto o nel personaggio qualcosa che rimandi ad un significato universale, ad una visuale alta delle cose. Lo dice bene in questo altro passaggio: “vide un ramo trascinato a tutta velocità dal fiume scivolare oltre la cresta. Ma quando cercò di seguirlo fino in fondo alla coltre d’acqua, scomparve. La confusione del particolare si perdeva nel disegno universale. Il senso dell’importanza di tutte le cose, che poteva percepire solo dopo aver avvertito la mancanza di significato in ciascuna cosa presa singolarmente.”

Ultima annotazione. Leggendo ho sentito spesso affiorare una punta di orgoglio e di compassionevole empatia verso gli uomini e le donne della migrazione italiana verso gli Stati Uniti. Di questi tempi andare a riscoprire quella pagina della nostra storia può essere utile ai molti, che hanno perso il senso della compassione, dell’empatia e anche la memoria di cosa abbiamo dovuto fare per sopravvivere, nella nostra storia. Leggerlo aiuta a ricordare che siamo uno degli ultimi popoli al mondo che può permettersi la stupida tentazione di chiudere porte e porti in faccia a chiunque. E, sia detto per la precisione, chi se lo può permettere di sicuro meno di noi è il popolo americano.

Chi fosse interessato ad approfondimenti qui trova una scheda molto accurata e ben fatta su libro e autore (praticamente un libro sul libro).
http://www.oblique.it/images/rassegna...

[mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, if only there were another star to give this book. Six stars--that's my rating. I don't mean to raise expectations, but even if I do, The End is going to exceed them. This book accomplishes what I suppose all my favorite books do, maybe what every good book will do, and that is it provides you with a new way of experiencing the world. I'm walking around seeing things differently; I'm a new kind of observer of places and people and the things they do for having spent time with this book. That's what I'm talking about. On top of that, the novel's structure is complex but not complicated, never forced. Intersections occur that frankly sort of amazed me. By reading this book, I learned something about how to put together a novel, and in that learning I had this experience: Wow, I didn't know you could do that in fiction. When I first read Self-Help by Lorrie Moore, or White Noise by DeLillo or Catcher in the Rye I had that experience. I read for that. And that's another criterion I use when separating my favorite books from impressive-but-not-favorite books: Does it surprise in the right way? It does. Odd, idiosyncratic moments of insight into the inner lives of characters in The End surprise but never for the sake of surprising; they instead serve our understanding of motives. Also, a certain kind of call-and-response with questions shows up every so often, employed in narration to move things along or reveal character; in less-skilled hands such a device might only draw attention to itself. So many wonderful moments in this book, too, so many objects precisely drawn and humans humanized in weirdly perfect ways. Some of my favorites involved, in separate instances, a shoe tree, the appearance of the devil, a musical saw, Niagara Falls, a punch in the face and a jeweler's hammer. Do I dare say The End is the best novel I've read this year? I do.

[Christopher Febles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rocco LaGrassa has been a baker in a small Ohio town for decades. Though life hasn’t followed the easiest path, he’s been devoted to his kids and steady in his job. One summer day in 1953, he’s handed the news that his son has died in a Korean POW camp. He closes the door of the bakery and goes outside a little aimlessly, wandering into a street carnival. In his confusion and denial, we see what he sees. Then, we meet who he knows, people who’ve had some impact on his long life, now coming to an unexpected turn.

Beautiful descriptions here. The author brings the sights and sounds to life. The places are textured and very real. The writing is also exquisite: tremendous prose that details everyone’s perspective. The feelings come through and get to the core of each character’s mind. It’s soulful and poetic. At the same time, the stream of consciousness style is very much at work. Not sure there’s a real plot, or a direction that the story follows. By shifting perspectives we’re mixed in with the bewildering aspects of Rocco’s life, which I suppose was the point. After a while I just sunk myself into the beauty of the writing and didn’t bother seeking a traditional story structure. That made the reading a better emotional experience. I liked Rocco and enjoyed his life arc.

And I have a signed copy! Very interesting story and person.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

My God, the sentences of Signore Scibona! Constructions hard-headed yet lovely, precise yet inventive: "Night, for children, was more a place than a time." And: "…Lina was a child. She lacked the natural cruelty that a conversance with the marital act encouraged one to refine." And: "The city was a mammoth trash heap -- even the lake was brown -- but it was an honorable place. It put pretty to one side." THE END is a debut novel -- a runner-up for the current Nat'l Book Award -- and it has a lot more where that came from. Another GR guy could pluck a handful of different yet equally delicious turns of phrase. All combine skewed aphorism, urbanity with all the senses open, Roman Catholic arcana and Southern Italian superstition, and plain old perspicuity about the human animal as it ages and changes. Physical description, too, proves on the money and felicitous. As for plot, hmm, the novel’s central date falls in August, 1953, a moment when “Europe was happening, right here, and it didn’t fit.” Didn’t fit any longer, that is: on this day in Scibona's Italian-American Cleveland begins the decay that hit all inner cities during that era, largely because the “moolies”-- the African Americans -- start moving in. Scibona’s opening chapters hinge on an incident in which the a miracle-seeking Ital-Am throng, out for a parade behind a statue of the Madonna, threatens to erupt in a race riot. A few dancing blacks disrupt the celebration. That disruption, as the novel goes on, passes through the prism of four or five different vantage points. The result is a metropolitan oratorio, with an bristling combination of wit and pathos, alive throughout with a brio delivered out of the side of the mouth. THE END has the earmarks of a masterpiece we'll be reading long after our own neighborhoods shuffle off this grease-stained coil.

[Annalisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I keep wondering how to rate this and how to feel about it and I'm conflicted. On one hand, I like the idea of a theme being the connection to the story like a symphony, but on the other it felt so disjointed and pointless. Somethings tied together too neatly and others are thrown in with no relevance or conclusion. On one hand, some of the writing is beautiful and thought-provoking and on the other all that introspection with no character development. We never understand anything about the characters and why they do the things they do. The only character I liked in the book was the grandson. I understood his pain and anger and could sympathize with him, but everyone else, everything else, didn't go anywhere or mean much of anything to me.

[Daniele · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esordio importante ed ambizioso di uno Scibona molto giovane.
Romanzo a più voci, con flussi di coscienza e salti temporali che abbinati alla scrittura ricercata a volte appesantiscono un po' la lettura, ma tutto sommato si tratta di un ottimo prodotto.
Forse merita qualcosa di più come punteggio ma l'ho letto in un modo un po' spezzettato che sicuramente non aiuta nel caso di romanzi un po' più complessi della media.
Una rilettura sarebbe la cosa ideale, ma non è per adesso :)


Rocco voleva voltarsi indietro, voltarsi dentro di sé. Si era fermato nel corridoio, la solitudine alle spalle, innanzi a lui la società, e si era sentito intrappolato in quel luogo di passaggio, sentiva di aver trascorso tutta la sua vita in questo corridoio e desiderava con tutto il cuore di passare le prossime due ore chiuso nel bagno o per strada. Non posso andare in una direzione e non posso andare nemmeno nell'altra, disse al suo cuore.

La sensazione di desiderare con tutte le proprie forze di essere innamorato a volte poteva assomigliare alla sensazione dell'amore stesso.

Se avesse potuto toccare l'oggetto della sua paura non l'avrebbe più provata, avrebbe invece provato l'appagamento della conoscenza. Ma chi ha paura non può toccare la cosa temuta. La paura è una freccia che punta verso il nulla.

Ecco dunque la nostra meta finale, il sogno di un bambino che si compie. Una volta che cominciamo a cadere e a dimenarci in aria pieni di paura, la nostra volontà ci appare chiara; voltiamo la faccia verso il basso; non diciamo «cadere», ma «tuffarsi»; osserviamo la terra che corre verso di noi a incontrare i nostri occhi. Eccola. Non è uno schianto. Siamo una linea che interseca un piano. Ci passiamo attraverso come proiettili.

Perché bisogna spiegare ogni cosa? Perché dobbiamo dire "perché"? Diamo un nome alle ragioni del nostro agire, raccontiamo a noi stessi queste favole personali, e sappiamo dall'inizio che nella migliore delle ipotesi sono solo verità incomplete.

Eravamo diversi, tu e io. Tu sentivi quello che sentivi; mentre io, come uno scienziato, cercavo sempre di sapere quello che sentivo.

[Gena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: Salvatore is a friend, and we wrote letters during the time he was working on this novel, and he included one of my own childhood habits confessed in one of these letters in the pages of the manuscript, so that, in a small way, I am *in this novel*. It is very exciting. When I read the passage, my heart pounded a little. So of course I'm not an objective reader, but then, who is? This is a gorgeous novel. It seems much too wise for a debut, but it was in the works for a long time. It's everything I want when I devote myself to reading a novel-length book: careful, deliberate, thoughtful, elegant. The first novel-writer I remember learning to read seriously was Virginia Woolf, and Scibona's prose rewards its reader the same way Woolf's does—it not only sets scenes and tells stories, but it builds internal worlds that allow you to inhabit its characters, for better or worse. At times I couldn't tell if I was feeling a certain character's experience so clearly because there was a cultural connection ("is this an Italian American thing? a Catholic thing?") or simply because it was so well written. A thing of beauty. In the lead, as of the beginning of September, for Best Book of the Year.

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel haunted me for weeks. It takes place across the span of several decades, weaving forward and back from a single day in 1953 in Elephant Park, Ohio, in an immigrant neighborhood, and tracking multiple characters who are as doomed as any of the characters in L'Inferno.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the fact that this book was written in an accomplished and unique voice, I did not enjoy reading it. To me, it was frustrating and unnecessarily opaque.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of five finalists for The 2008 National Book Award, The End is an impressive debut whose serpentine plot hovers around a single tumultuous moment during a Catholic street carnival held in an Italian-American enclave of 1953 Cleveland. Amidst a backdrop of racial tensions, poverty and immigration, this pivotal moment ties together the beautifully developed characters who makes up this highly psychological drama: There's Rocco, the town baker, who has just received word that his son has perished in a Korean POW camp; Mrs. Marini, an elderly abortionist, who is looking for a protégé before she dies and thinks she has found one in Lina, a would-be spinster; and the story's antagonist - a jeweler - who is responsible for a large part of the novel's dread.

In a book that often reads more like an epic, lyric poem than a novel, Scibona's characters become the focus of a piece that is often more psychology than plot. In The End, Scibona seems to be channeling heavyweight modernists such as James Joyce, William Faulkner and T.S. Eliot, so it should follow that his novel is dense, poetic, often awe-inspiring and frequently difficult.

Ultimately, it's the author's sentences that become both his blessing and his curse. The End is comprised of gorgeously opaque sentences, like "If he could denude himself from his mineral self, leaving only caption, he would become at last translucent, transient, timeless," and "I was a fleeting thought the mind that the sea was might light upon and then forget." Scibona's writing is as breathtaking as it is obfuscatory, and, as such, it follows that The End is a novel that demands much of its reader, and one that must be read slowly.

Ultimately, I found The End to be a bit of an enigma. Scibona's writing sparkled, his characters troubled, his story mystified, and he unapologetically tested me as a reader, just like the modernist authors he appeared to be channeling. And as is the case with the work of Eliot and Faulkner, I must be honest and admit that I appreciate what he created more than I enjoyed it.

[Pietro Caliceti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Molto bello

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me defend those 3 stars, starting with a little backstory.

Recently I was following this thread on a livejournal blog and there were several people debating the validity of Young Adult books as suitable fiction for adults. “Can’t you find enjoyable books that aren’t made for 14-year-olds?” someone asked. Now, I’ve read and loved plenty of non-YA stuff, my literary canvas is very all-encompassing, however, it is true that I read quite a lot of YA as well. So thank goodness for the blogger who replied to the previously quoted snootypants, “Lots of adult books […] seem to either be nothing but people going to work and having family problems or what DRAMATIC issue will they take on next, or it's LOOK AT ME AND MY LANGUAGE GIMMICK, and sometimes, people would like to escape that.” Yes, yes, yes! This person also pointed out how Young Adult publishers seem more willing to take risks with concepts. I don’t know, probably has something to do with how all kids have ~imagination~ and all adults grow out of it when they ~mature~. Or something.

The point is, I did not hate this book, but I didn’t love it, and at times I even struggled with liking it. Scibona seemed to throw every ounce of investment into the language of the book, that characters, plot, conflict, denouement…none of it held any weight. I’d be reading along and come across a beautiful sentence or heartbreaking image…but they never felt tied to anything, the next sentence would be highfalutin and distant from me. Between those gorgeous bits of prose I would find my eyes starting to glaze over. Here’s an example:

To describe a day spent entirely reading:

“It was such a sweetness those days in the parlor, to occupy a room, a self, made only of words, the objectness of things having been peeled off and tossed aside.”

Gorgeous, right? And then a sentence later:

“If he could denude himself of his mineral self, leaving only his caption, he would become at last transeunt, transient, timeless.”

Like, I get it after reading it a few times, but that’s just it. A novel, in my opinion, shouldn’t have to take you three times longer than normal to read because you have to keep rereading flowery sentences just to follow along with the rambling inner monologues/philosophical musings of the characters. Authors have succeeded before in writing gorgeously poetic prose that doesn’t take you out of your readings even for a moment.

And referencing back to my anectodal introduction that I shared, yes, the subject matter of this novel was largely boring to me. I get it, modern fiction, everybody is selfish and dark and no one is happy and life is meaningless except for when it isn’t, and when you set your book in the fifties you get to be casually racist and your narrator morally ambiguous, and it’s edgy to use rape as drama, and it’s current to throw a lot of spiritual/religious stuff in it, but only to show how none of it really means anything to anyone because it’s just a cultural thing, and all characters, no matter how diverse, are philosophers. (I did feel kind of bad every time I thought, “Really? Really? this is how people talk? Ok, Scibona.” It happened a lot.)

And now I feel awful for this fairly negative review, especially after a friend suggested it very wholeheartedly. To which I say, I’m sorry, this book/review happened to come at a time when someone pinpointed the reason why I don’t read more “adult fiction” like this (adults, their families, their firstworldproblems, etc.), and these pet peeves were made obvious in the reading. Let me then leave you with some beautiful quotes:

Her mind was not a chamber in which a crowd of lawyers competed to direct and obstruct her will; it was a forest, and deep inside, alone, in a cool pond, her I swam freely on its back and scrutinized the tangled canopy of thought overhead

The vineyard under snowfall looked like a sheet of paper on which a single word had been typed again, and typed again, and again, and again; until the ink in the ribbon failed and the word, at first so distinct, could hardly be read.
(perhaps my favorite image/sentence in the whole book!)

Whatever she had wanted to say to him had long ago withered on its stalk, been plowed under the ground, been eaten and excreted by worms, and sprouted again in strange and unexpected shapes.
(How freaking gorgeous is that?)

[Justin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember reading in a review of Bellow's letters the idea that some writers can craft remarkable sentences, but can't write a paragraph to save their life. I guess you can broaden that theme: some people can write a great statements, but not much in the way of dialogue. Scibona is clearly a sentence and statement guy. Part of this is because this book is so overwhelmingly narrated as interior monologue. If he'd made it too ordered or comprehensible, some people would complain that it was unrealistic or too rational or something, and paragraphs and dialogue tend to be ordered and comprehensible. Part of it is that had he been born in the nineteenth century he would have been a poet, rather than writing prose, such is his love of words. Sadly, as with way too many literary writers, his characters think about words to an excessive and, to be honest, dull extent. To his credit, the character who thinks about words the most is a sociopath, which seems to me to be the logical outcome of thinking that the word/world relationship is really, really important. Is all this the effect of writing workshops? There's an idiotic English major term paper in that.

So, plot. A certain kind of reader will complain that 'nothing happens,' that there's too much reflection. A different kind of reader will applaud the fact that SS puts so much weight on thinking and memory. They're both wrong: this book's most remarkable characteristic is the incredible *density* of the plot. This is what a Victorian novel looks like if - as we've all wished had happened - it had been edited by a modernist. The plot remains, but it's told by memories and allusion rather than endless longeurs. Result: rather than 900 pages, 300. The touchstones? Woolf and Joyce. The problem? The structure becomes rebarbative and less rewarding than it could have been. Whereas Ulysses eases you in with the Daedalus chapters, The End gives you its Bloom (called Rocco) up front, with no warning, and no connection to the remainder of the book except for a couple of chance encounters. That's a tough start. Through the middle you get lots of logophilia and interior monologue. Ulysses ends in a bang with its famous 'feminine' stream of consciousness sentence; The End also closes with a feminine monologue, but here it's a whimper. Not much of an end.

All that said, it's nice that someone wants to write difficult, challenging fiction. I'll buy his next book the day it's released and dedicate a week to reading it, in the hope that the ambition remains, his logorrhea is cured and there's less hedging about undecidability or ambiguity or whatever the latest, hippest relativists are calling it.

PLOT SPOILERS: Based on the similarity in their structure, my utterly unfounded suspicion is that The End is a kind of answer to the optimism, if you will, of Ulysses. The main events here are war, abortion, rape, a lynching, a suicide and serial abandonment. The apolitical interracial love-in is replaced with racism and hatred. That makes it more honest than Joyce, which is a big tick in my book. I'd like to know what someone more familiar than I am with Ulysses makes of The End.

[Janessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another one of those books that defies the star rating. Scibona takes writing to the level of true art, and for that The End is fascinating and intriguing. However, reading it is difficult. It challenges perceptions, and forces the reader to take an entirely new approach to following story and narrative structure.

The main reason for this is that there really is no narrative structure. The characters and their lives, the causes and effects, do not carry the story toward its conclusion. Instead, Scibona introduces a theme that plays into the lives of each of his characters. It is the repetition and variation of that theme that gives the book its structure.

In an interview, Scibona referred to his book's theme as the crisis of faith -- the moment in each character's life when they meet with life-altering disappointment. Scibona depicts his characters with breathtaking clarity, through both the mundane details and the psychological depths of their lives. We see the change that comes when the crisis arrives. And then we follow the theme of crisis into the life of another character.

The only thing that ties the characters together, other than the theme, is their physical proximity -- all touching shoulders in a growing and changing Italian-American community in 1950's Ohio. The details Scibona evokes of the setting are so vivid and visceral, in a way the community itself is a character. One that experiences its own crisis of faith on the day of the celebrated festival of the Assumption of the Virgin. The day that, in a way, brings all the characters together.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

What did I just read? Seriously, what did I just read? I don't even know how to feel about The End.
First off, the blurb is a little misleading, it might be a single day through the eyes of 6 different characters, but not really. The actual day itself was almost a footnote to the story. The time line is confusing, and if you have to tell me it's the same day in the blurb, then maybe a better job of conveying it's the same day would have been helpful, especially since there were a lot of other days thrown in there.
The writing was often beautiful, deep, and brooding, and I enjoyed the story at times, but overall...not so much.
Ultimately The End and the ending left me wanting more clarity and maybe a little hope. There really is such a thing as being too literary, and this is a good example of it. It's like drowning, total over-saturation without allowing the reader to take a breath.
However, I see a lot of potential in Salvatore Scibona's writing, so I won't rule out reading something else by him.

[pierlapo quimby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sono in preda all'estasi.
Quale ricchezza, profondità, quale densità di pensiero...!

Diceva il poeta che la vita è sogno e indubbiamente aveva ragione.
Aggiungo io che anche la letteratura, quella migliore, non può che partecipare della stessa natura.
E per qualche giorno - per l'esattezza dal 25 luglio al 2 agosto dell'anno 2011 - non ho fatto che sognare un magnifico sogno letterario, ho sognato di leggere il più bel romanzo degli ultimi anni (quanti, poco importa), ho sognato una mente fina che non si contiene e che anzi esplode grazie a una penna ancor più fina.

Leggete La fine di Salvatore Scibona, sognate La fine di Salvatore Scibona!

[Ffiamma · Rating 4 out of 5]

difficile parlare di questo libro- fatto di storie in frammenti che pian piano si ricongiungono come tessere di un mosaico. difficile perché quel che mi ha colpito non sono stati né gli eventi né i personaggi- ma l'atmosfera e la scrittura e il procedere non in linea retta ma a zigzag (tra presente e passato, reale e immaginato, intuizioni e collegamenti). si sente, in qualche modo, che c'è stata una lunga gestazione, che sono intervenuti ripensamenti e riscritture, che ogni aspetto è stato ponderato (senza mai sentire l'artificio). bellissimo esordio, peccato non averlo letto in originale.

[lise.charmel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Per chi ha tempo, ne parlo anche qui: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGCF8...

Mi spiace, io questo libro non l’ho capito. L’autore riempie le pagine di scene, di pensieri dei protagonisti, di domande inutili, frasi tra parentesi, situazioni senza capo né coda. Però non racconta una storia e quei pezzi che racconta li lascia lì, senza portarli da nessuna parte. Indubbiamente la scrittura è superba, però quando io leggo la parola “transeunte” mi viene voglia di chiudere il libro e passare ad altro.

[📚Linda Blake · Rating 2 out of 5]

There probably is some real wisdom in The End, but I got lost in the date changes, character switching, and all the esoterica. I suppose this structure, that is, no structure, was meant to imitate life, but I found it confusing. Most of the time I didn’t know whose voice I was hearing, where the story was physically, or what year and time it was. Maybe I’m not enough of a discerning reader to grasp the brilliance of this book. 🤷🏽‍♀️

[Célia Gil · Rating 3 out of 5]

O Fim é o romance de estreia de Salvatore Scibona, foi finalista do National Book Award e vencedor do Young Lions Fiction Award da Biblioteca Pública de Nova Iorque. Em 2010, o autor foi escolhido pela The New Yorker como um dos 20 escritores mais promissores com menos de 40 anos.
Uma boa premissa numa escrita poética e cuidada. Porém, não me fascinou. Considero que me pareceu uma manta de retalhos que, muitas vezes não encaixam, um puzzle em que as peças nem sempre encaixam, o que o torna um pouco confuso.
Gostei do fundo histórico, da questão da imigração na América, das tensões raciais que nos foram dadas a sentir, de o facto de as personagens mostrarem muito humanas, quase familiares, nas suas virtudes e defeitos, agarrando-se à fé para resistirem a todas as contrariedades da vida.
E do novelo de histórias que se unem no fim, não falo e deixo que cada leitor crie a sua própria opinião. Convém ler com atenção para não se cair num emaranhado de fios soltos.

[Kathrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I should have guessed in this National Book Award Finalist entitled The End, the end actually occurs several times (from various perspectives) in the middle of the book, and the end is actually not an end at all, and leads me to question why I felt so unsatisfied when finally reaching this end that is not an end. There is a reason that the end comes at the end, and god bless it the experiments in structure and form, I still want an end at the end. Scibona is talented in creating character and atmosphere -- the first 50 pages (can I call it the "beginning"?) are perfect-pitch, extraordinary prose, reminding me of Steinbeck's Winter of Our Discontent. But then Scibona decides to tell the same story from a different perspective, but, unless you studied the reviews beforehand, it takes another 100 pages before you realize it's the same story. And he sure doesn't give you any coffee breaks along the way...A woman's 40+ year career as neighborhood abortionist is so discreet Scibona doesn't even use the words abortion, pregnant, baby, etc. There's a lot of atmospheric character development here, and because it is difficult to identify the end of the story until you've reached the end of the book, it is likewise difficult to identify the beginning or the middle. The forward narrative culminates on August 15, 1953, but the characters' stories certainly continue and precede all in various fashions. I think Scibona likes that, but I found it irritating. I just wanted to continue reading his lovely moment-out-of-time character descriptions, and give up with the time-line altogether.

[Gianni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non semplice da seguire nella narrazione, il racconto ha come centro temporale il 15 agosto del ’53, a Elephant Park, il giorno della festa dell’Assunta nella comunità italo-americana. La storia si muove avanti e indietro nel tempo, si frammenta centrifugamente in molti rivoli per poi trovare una ricomposizione nel tempo e nelle relazioni tra i personaggi. Nei dialoghi (pochi) e nei monologhi interiori il narratore è sempre la voce dell’autore che legge e si fa interprete, e ciò dà unitarietà ai vissuti interiori. La scrittura è incalzante, scioglie i nodi e riannoda i fili, il punto di vista e la voce passano da un personaggio all’altro e scartano nel tempo. Azzardo a dire che se fosse un film, per me i registi potrebbero essere i fratelli Cohen.

[piperitapitta]

Ne vendo una copia perch�� ne ho due: Scibona era a Roma e non potendo andare alla presentazione @Alloctona me ne ha gentilmente acquistata un'altra facendomela dedicare dall'autore :-)

Vendo la copia in pi�� a 15 ��� ai quali vanno aggiunte le spese di spedizione (a scelta dell'acquirente) se l'interessato non si trova a Roma.

[Michael Shilling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Needs to be read slow. Maps the mythic weave that constructs certain American identities. No I'm not sure what that means either but it feels right to say. A WOW of a book.

[Rhyena · Rating 2 out of 5]

could not get into it, no matter how hard i tried. i was very interested in it from reviews i read but then i could not get into it, kinda like a bad lover you have the hots for.

[Brando Bonsanti · Rating 3 out of 5]

E mezzo

[Robert Wechsler]

I was very taken with the first section of this novel, but the characters and, increasingly, the prose of the rest of the sections up to the middle didn’t interest me enough to continue.

[Robert Nolin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, that was weird. I was two-thirds into this book and was thinking I was probably going to re-read it again right away, as I was sure I was missing a lot. The story was confusing, but I felt sure a second read would clear everything up. But then, when I hit the last two "parts," the sentences began to bounce off my eyeballs. Perhaps a second read would help, but I don't think so. This book asked a lot from me in the beginning, and then it became so opaque that I could only conclude the author was only writing for himself and, possibly, an awards committee. Three stars, rounding up from 2.5. Book recommended by Amanda Coplin in "The Orchardist." I guess they're friends.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I recommend The End to you I need to know if you’re a plodder or a skimmer. What goes on with you as you lose yourself in fiction? Do you savor dense, poetic prose? Do you admire the writer’s craft of a writers’ writer? Do you enjoy reading Kafka, Joyce, Conrad, or Faulkner? If so, dive in and swim through The End.
Read it for its structure, with sub-plots spinning forth from a single afternoon in a single neighborhood yet spanning more than half a century and two continents. All the tangents weave together delightfully.
Read this book for its colorful characters, surreal yet credible women and men in absurd yet believable situations.
Read it for its setting. Even if, like me, you’re only vaguely familiar with Cleveland, Ohio, you’ll appreciate this portrait of the city in 1953—its shifting ethnicities, its racial attitudes, its industrial pollution, and its agricultural surroundings.
Read it for its topical themes—race, immigration, abortion, religion, theology, psychology, and socio-economic class. Never polemical, ever complex, these themes weave their way through the sub-plots, the internal monologues, and the dialogues among the characters. If you yearn for bold moral judgments, you may be disappointed; but if you’re open to ambiguity, you’ll be fascinated.
Read it for its word-play, for its fun tidbits of etymology.
You may decide Salvatore Scibona’s novel is self-indulgent, that he wrote it not for an audience of readers, but for himself or his relatives or his characters. You may consider his style inaccessible. The End isn’t light reading. However, if you’re patient enough to go back over a sentence until you hear its native voice, or to get back on the rails of Scibona’s train of thought after a thought has sent you skidding off in a daydream, you will savor this book. I’m generally a slow reader, but The End captured my attention and kept me absorbed; I finished it in less than a week.
The acknowledgments state:

This book was written with the aid of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Michener/Copernicus Society, the U.S.-Fulbright Commission, the MacDowell Colony, and the Corporation of Yaddo,

plus the advice of 15 individuals. Moreover, it was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award of the New York Public Library. If I were teaching a course in recent American literature, I would include The End in the syllabus and require students to read and discuss it.