Big mouths, dirty mouths, diseased mouths. What goes into them and what comes out. As you might expect from an Italian-American raised in Brooklyn and Queens, Nicholas Montemarano’s modest debut for lit-fic purveyor Context Books hums and buzzes and occasionally shrieks with the kind of dialogue that makes you think he was taking dictation. In a sense, he was. This is the story of Tony Santangelo, a young man set to be released from prison when A Fine Place ($21.95) opens in 1995, and the character is based on Montemarano’s cousin, who was indicted in the 1989 beating and shooting of African-American teenager Yusuf Hawkins. (He was eventually acquitted.) As we witness Tony’s family awkwardly await his return, Montemarano invites us into not such a fine place at all. One feels sorry for these people, imagining them, with their elderly aches and pains, “millions” of cigarettes, and stifling boredom, as the waxy-faced undead shuffling around in bad light. Tony could make it all better, but will he even show up? Will he still be handsome? Will he be able to handle the stares? Related in a rusty chain of flashbacks, old letters, dream sequences, and short episodes, A Fine Place doesn’t embark to answer those questions, or any others. In fact, it often ignores Tony and the hate crime he’s associated with altogether, which at times is confusing and yet also oddly enlightening. Predominantly told from the perspective of Tony’s family, Montemarano’s Selbyesque prose ably carries not just the strains of growing old, but of feeling old. It’s the anti-coming-of-age.
This article appears in February 22 • 2002.