Status Updates From Gravesend

I read Boyle’s debut set in his native Brooklyn Italian-American neighborhood (but not for long as California, Florida, Jersey, and Long Island beckon) last in his series recently reviewed by me. Since I had the library queue keeping Gravesend, a fitting title indeed, as attesting to its deserved popularity. I remain impressed as it’s probably his most adept plot which unlike some of his subsequent novels in

“He never strayed far from the neighborhood, unless he took a bus to Atlantic City from Bay Parkway or went to some bullshit family event in Jersey. When he went to Duncan’s parent-teacher conferences, it was the first time he’d ever been in Bay Ridge, just a couple of neighborhoods over. No reason to go, he’d always said, just a bunch of goddamn Micks. He’d never been to Manhattan, never been to the Bronx

“sitting on a bench outside and munching on a square slice, chasing it with a chocolate ice and maybe bringing a pint of spumoni home. He’d met their mother at a mixer in the Most Precious Blood basement. He’d walked his Nonna and Nonno to church every Sunday morning. He’d gone to his brother Ralphie’s on Stillwell every Sunday for a touch of Johnnie Walker Red…

“The neighborhood was the story of Pop’s life, even more than it was the story of Conway’s or Duncan’s. He had gone to school at Most Precious Blood. Had been raised “on Bay Thirty-Eighth. Went to Coney Island on weekends and holidays. Rode the bus. Scratched lotto tickets outside the Optimo. Got his newspapers at Augie’s. Bought Duncan and Conway Spaldeens at Jimmy’s. Got pizza at Spumoni Gardens…