|
|
By Domenico Pacitti The
Madonnas of President Street by John Sandman. Published in January
2003 by Xlibris Corporation, Philadelphia, 272 pages, US$21.99,
ISBN 1 4010 3260 5. The
book begins with Vivian Viola and her 17-year-old daughter Melanie
being forced to give up their Manhattan flat and move back
to Vivian's native Brooklyn as a result of rising rents. Set in
the mid-eighties, it is narrated in Vivian's voice throughout and
features many colourful exchanges that faithfully reflect all the
familiar raciness of New York speech. Their
new landlady Mrs Rotoli, the quintessential Italian Roman Catholic
widow forever dressed in black, owns a typical house in President
Street. Rows of ornamental madonna statues stand on display in
cement cases, some of which even have glass doors. Despite having
grown up in a similar house in the area, Vivian suggestively
admits that she still does not know whether the madonnas are meant
to be an expression of faith and good will or bondage and misery. Entertaining
portrayals such as the following reveal Sandman at his best: "Mrs
Rotoli was a cross between Marlon Brando in The Godfather and
Ernest Borgnine in McHale's Navy. When she gave you her
stare of disapproval, she was Don Corleone dispatching his
family's enemy to go to sleep with the fishes, or whatever that
phrase was. When she was more light-hearted, she was McHale
playing a practical joke on Tim Conway. She put her clammy paw on
my sleeve, and her voice fell to a whisper. 'I'll make a prayer
that you pay your rent on time.' " Another
is Vivian's recollection of her father's family: "Vito's
family was spread all over Brooklyn. All the grudges and
prejudices from Italy came over with them. They were as alienated
from each other as they were from America. One family was from
Calabria, or someplace like that; another was Neapolitan and if
you put them together it was a freak show. Each family had its own
sauce for the pasta made from some secret recipe that was like the
family coat of arms. If the Calabrian from Canarsie came over for
dinner with the Neapolitan from Bensonhurst, they brought their
own sauce. Anybody else's wasn't good enough. The moment of truth
with my mother and father was when Lois tried to make her
own sauce. It was a disaster. From then on Vito began to see that
his only kid –
me –
wasn't going to grow up to be a real Italian. Although some
people I know would dispute that." The
focus gradually comes to centre exclusively on the generation gap
between mother and daughter. Melanie emerges as being endowed with
far more common sense and equilibrium than her mother and
reproaches her for failing to abide by her self-avowedly strong
feminist ideals. Melanie is seen to possess a new sensibility that
places her as far apart from her mother as Vivian was from her own
parents. Sandman
has pulled off a remarkable tour de force in his convincing
female perspective narration, his painstaking depiction of female
characters and his scrupulous attention to background detail. This
together with the fast-moving dialogue renders the book a pleasure
to read. It
is perhaps worth noting that male characters in the novel receive
much less attention and are by comparison less vivid to the point
of being excessively shadowy at times, though it is difficult to
say to what extent this might reflect a deliberate ploy on the
part of the author –
or narrator. Sandman has published four previous novels: Eating Out, Fords Eat Chevs, The Brief Case of a Fat Man and Declining Gracefully. He was born in Camden, New Jersey and works as a reporter for Securities Industry News, NY. Note: This review was first published by JUST Book Reviews on May 25 2003. |
