Say That to My Face: Fiction

By David Prete

Book Overview

Say That to My Face introduces us to Joey Frascone and his family and friends in the tense, violent, racially divided Yonkers of the Seventies and Eighties. His childhood segmented between four homes and his teenage dreams pulling him towards the challenge and excitement of New York City, Joey is a handsome kid whose intense and conflicting loyalties threaten to tear him apart. Whether responding to the crush of a motherless girl whose sister he adores; flirting with danger during the terrifying summer of mass-murderer "Son of Sam"; cheating his teammates of a victory to save a friend on the ballfield; watching his mother play softball against his father ("in her lovely red dress, she pretended to fix her crotch and spit out a wad of chewing tobacco... With one shake of her ass in the batter's box of a church parking lot, my mother dropped thirty years"); or struggling with the mind-blowing high of a lifetime while running drugs from Jamaica, Frascone wins the reader's steadfast allegiance as he tries to figure out where his own truest loyalties lie. Capturing people in flux between their better and worse selves, David Prete is one outstanding storyteller. With hilarious, thrilling, and painful accuracy, he evokes the color and poignancy and humor of Italian-American speech and the characters who use it. Like barman Frank Gianguzzi, whose favorite term of affection is "coog," from the Italian "cugino," or cousin, or any of its variations: "coog-o, coogini, coogette, coogie coog, coog a'bell, coog a'brut." Or Benny Colangelo, the quintessential neighborhood guy, "emanating his future. A future of work, neighborhood, family, and the beautiful poetry of routine." Or Joey's butcher grandfather, scratching his grandson's back with his thick, heavy butcher's nails, as he yells, "Look at the prince here." Or his Uncle Gingy, whose motto -- "the one thing you don't mess with is family"-doesn't seem to apply to how he treats his wife Having come of age among characters as memorable as any in Faulkner's Mississippi, Joey finds that even when he escapes Yonkers for the sophisticated city sparkling at the other side of the bridge, his past isn't forgotten: the past isn't even past.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393057984
• ISBN13: 9780393057980
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W.
• Length: 188 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

addictive and beautifully written tale

I read some of the other reviews on this site and feel like I must have read a different book. I truly could not put David Prete's beautifully written debut novel down. The prose is lovely, the characters endearing. There was also a great deal of humor, especially when the protagonist describes his large Italian family and some of the more colorful characters of his Yonkers youth. I rank this novel right up there with Tobias Woolf's classic, This Boys Life, for its insights into the difficulties of growing up. Truly an impressive debut.

Beautiful and Honest - Sometimes people don't like what they see in the mirror

This book is a beautiful and subtle exploration of people who are stuck -- in one way or another -- and trying desperately to get unstuck so they can live the lives they've dreamed of. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes them don't, but each of their stories is beautiful. And in the midst of all this potentially heavy material, the book is hilarious. The characters are so real, and the dialogue so true, it feels like they're sitting next to you telling you their stories. The main character grew up in Yonkers, and in response to all the reviewers who trashed this book saying they didn't like the way it portrayed their town, I have one thing to say: It sucks when someone hold up a mirror and you don't like what you see, doesn't it? A lot of people hate the way they sound on tape or look on camera, but that doesn't make those reflections inaccurate. Uncomfortable? Sure. Painful? Perhaps. But that doesn't make them less real. The same is true here. And sure, there are plenty of people in Yonkers who aren't like the ones Prete wrote about -- Yonkers is a huge city -- but there are also plenty who are precisely like those in this book. If anything, the fact that this book has upset some people is a testament to the depth and power of its characters -- they're real, they strike a cord. They tell a truth that not everyone wants to hear. And they do it in a way that's light and laugh-out-loud hilarious. Some people get offended by that -- I love it.