9781555974985

In 1953 in the Italian neighbored Elephant Park in Ohio, the residents enjoy the annual August Feast of the Assumption. "Unwifed" and "Un-children" baker Rocco cannot accept his family left him; in fact he rejects the military informing him his son died in action in Korea. He expects every one of them to come home shortly. The workaholic jeweler with nothing else in his life, the bone weary seamstress, the runaway teen, and the acrimonies elderly abortion doctor attend the Feast. They are just as lost as the baker is as they cannot accept desertion although each in some way has been affected by dissimilation. In fact in a macabre way they have each other as they and others unite when a few blacks try to enjoy the festivities but are not just unwelcome but hostilities turn violent with The End justifying the means. This not a simple linear historical tale that goes from one point to the next until the end is reached; instead the story line is convoluted and difficult to follow, but once the reader adapts, he or she will appreciate a deep look into the window of the souls. A sort of Eleanor Rigby starring in the Outcast of Poker Flats; The End is a profound tale of what makes a community as the coming together is not necessarily positive. Not for everyone, Salvatore Scibona provides to his audience a resonating character study in which each of the key cast members find their respective past converge on a hot humid August 15 1953, a day of infamy for the lost residents of Elephant Park Harriet Klausner

After reading the blurb I expected to dislike this book but quite the opposite. It is extremely well written, almost lyrical in places, and kept me entertained through out. I strongly recommend this book to any reader.

I was so disappointed in this book. When I heard the author on NPR discussing the book and was made aware he was nominated for a National Book Foundation award, I was really looking forward to The End. I found the book very difficult to follow, drifting from one character to the next, not realizing whether the characters were experiencing something, hallucinating the situation or recalling something from their past. I finished the book with the hope that I would get it in the end, I did not. I would recommend you do not waist your time with this book.

"The End" is an interesting book, very much worth reading. It also requires a patient reader. It is the story of one day, Assumption Day, August 15, 1953, in Elephant Park, a section of Cleveland settled by Italian immigrants. However, the narrative structure is not chronological; it moves backward and forward in time and ends with a chapter entitled "The Present Moment: 1915." The lives of characters overlap, often in ways that at first are not entirely clear. The inside flap of the cover even offers an explanation of the novel's structure by appending a passage from the novel itself: "Distant events have thrown us into long, comet-like orbits, far from our origins, bur eventually we will circle back on people whose lives preceded and gave rise to our own." The first 65 pages belong to the baker, Rocco LaGrassa, but he then disappears from the story for a long time. Two chapters are devoted to a mystery involving a jeweler. The elderly woman at the center of the book, Costanza Marini, is the most complex character, but even she cannot be fully understood until the novel's end. Scibona's depiction of an immigrant community in flux, under pressures arising from racial conflict, changing social and cultural mores, and differences between first and second generation perspectives is lyrical, poetical. As a reader, you feel that you have been transported to times and places now lost. However, "The End" is not a book to pick up and put down too many times; if your reading is interrupted by the usual interference (work, weariness, lack of time) you may find yourself repeatedly going back a few pages to pick up the narrative thread. The effect of reading "The End" is a bit like listening to music; when you remove your bookmark and begin to read, you may have to wait a little (as you read) before you can hear the melody line again.

In a debut novel, Scibona takes us on a tour of Elephant Park, an Italian immigrant community in Ohio. "The End" follows several members of the community, each carefully crafted and realistically written. Set in the 1950s, it deals with both the immigrant experience in Elephant Park, and around the country, as the characters leave the Park moving their lives forward. The characters are varied; Costanza, an elderly abortionist, her young seamstress apprentice, Lina, Rocco, a baker faced with the death of his son in a Korean POW camp. Moving backward and forward in time, the book builds to a crescendo of an ending at Elephant Park's street carnival. Scibona has had short fiction published in a number of literary journals (Best New American Voices 2004, "The Pushcart Book of Short Stories") and his jump to long fiction took him straight to a National Book Award nomination. His use of language is subtle, seductive and sometimes deserves rereading a passage out loud.