A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself
William Boyle, 2019
Pegasus Books
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781643130583
Summary
Goodfellas meets Thelma and Louise when an unlikely trio of women in New York find themselves banding together to escape the clutches of violent figures from their pasts.
After Brooklyn mob widow Rena Ruggiero hits her eighty-year-old neighbor Enzio in the head with an ashtray when he makes an unwanted move on her, she embarks on a bizarre adventure.
Taking off in Enzio’s ’62 Impala, she retreats to the Bronx home of her estranged daughter, Adrienne, and her granddaughter, Lucia, only to be turned away by Adrienne at the door.
Their neighbor, Lacey "Wolfie" Wolfstein, a one-time Golden Age porn star and retired Florida Suncoast grifter, takes Rena in and befriends her.
When Lucia discovers that Adrienne is planning to hit the road with her ex-boyfriend Richie, she figures Rena’s her only way out of a life on the run with a mother she can’t stand.
But Richie has massacred a few members of the Brancaccio crime family for a big payday, and he drags even more trouble into the mix in the form of an unhinged enforcer named Crea. The stage is set for an explosion that will propel Rena, Wolfie, and Lucia down a strange path, each woman running from something and unsure what comes next.
A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself is a screwball noir about finding friendship and family where you least expect it, in which William Boyle again draws readers into the familiar—and sometimes frightening—world in the shadows at the edges of New York’s neighborhoods. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1978
• Where—Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., State University of New York–New Paltz; M.F.A., University of Mississippi
• Awards—
• Currently—lives in Oxford, Mississippi
William Boyle is an American novelist and short story writer. Originally from Brooklyn, New York City, he lived with his mother's family, who were from Italy, in the Bensonhurst and Gravesend section of the boro. (Gravesend became the title of his 2014 novel.) Boyle's father, of Scottish descent, was mainly absent during his childhood.
Even as a child, Boyle says he was a disciplined writer, writing for 10-12 hours a day (when he had the time) at the age of 14. Boyle earned his B.A. from the State University of New York at New Paltz and, later, his M.F.A. at the University of Mississippi, where he now teaches as an adjunct. He wrote his first novel, Gravesend, in 2011 for his master's thesis; it was published in 2013. The novel was also released in France, where it was nominated for Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, and in the UK, where it was shortlisted for the New Blood Dagger Award. The novel was re-released in the U.S.
in 2018.
In 2015, Boyle published a volume of short stories, Death Don’t Have No Mercy. A novel, Tout est Brise (Everything is Broken) was published in France in 2017. Another novel, The Lonely Witness came out in the U.S. in 2018, and A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself in 2019.
Boyle lives with his wife in Oxford, Mississippi; they have two children. (Adapted from various online sources. Retrieved 3/5/2019.)
Book Reviews
Comic crime capers are fun. Comic crime capers starring women are even more fun. William Boyle delivers some choice laughs and a terrific trio of felons in A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself …on a road trip that's so much fun you don't want it to end.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review
[A] funny, gritty, touching narrative about the strength of three New York women caught in a world of abusive men, broken families, and mob violence. Friend is a rarity; a fresh novel about New York's underbelly. Crime fiction usually stays within the confines of the genre, but Boyle breaks away from those restrictions.
NPR
★ [An] addictive hardboiled crime novel…. Boyle skillfully mixes a classic Westlake/Leonard–style caper with the powerful tale of three women facing the ghosts of their pasts.
Publishers Weekly
This all sounds a little bit loopy, along the lines of Carl Hiaasen or Tim Dorsey, and there is indeed a surreal element to this caper. But there is also more than a little Thelma & Louise in Boyle’s terrific tale, which has some of the most stylish noir prose to grace the page in some time.
BookPage
★ The novel incorporates the snappy timing of both those films, and the Elmore Leonard–like cinematic prose begs for a film adaptation. Recommend this triumph of moral ambiguity to fans of black humor, including that of Carl Hiaasen and Dennis Lehane.
Booklist
[A] caper-inspired road story of quirky personalities on the run littered with gruesome deaths…. Deploying an inimitable tone that packs sardonic storytelling atop action and adventure…, Boyle's voice works even when it feels like it shouldn't. It's just the right kind of too much.
Kirkus Reviews
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