William Boyle’s novel Saint of the Narrows Street is an atmospheric and ambitious novel unforgettably set in south Brooklyn.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“Boyle structures the sprawling tale like a Greek tragedy, mining potent themes of legacy and class with such force and empathy that readers may come to think of him as the Balzac of Brooklyn. It’s a stunning achievement.”
In his own words, here is William Boyle‘s Book Notes music playlist for his novel Saint of the Narrows Street:
Saint of the Narrows Street opens in 1986 in the southern Brooklyn neighborhood of Gravesend. Risa Franzone is married to bad seed Sav, and they have an infant son, Fab. Their across-the-street neighbor Christopher “Chooch” Gardini—Sav’s longtime friend—yearns for Risa and is disgusted by Sav’s brutal behavior toward her. Risa’s sister, Giulia, comes running to her for refuge after a breakup. When Sav crosses one too many lines, the situation comes to a boil in their small apartment on a hot summer night. Saint of the Narrows Street has a classic noir set-up, but instead of staying within the confines of a compressed timeframe the book spans three decades. A secret festers. Blood is poisoned. Tragedy ripples out. Characters are haunted by bad decisions and worse mistakes. Music hangs in the background of the book in a significant way. Chooch and Sav are metalheads, and young Fab takes after them. Risa has her own taste—she sings the Carpenters to Fab, and she reflects on a Joni Mitchell album that was a balm until Sav destroyed it. Giulia pines for her ex, Marco, a boy from the block who has exceeded expectations and become a famous rock star. So, there’s the music in the book, music that the characters love and that has shaped their lives, but there’s also what I was listening to as I wrote it and other songs that informed what I was doing. I could make a playlist of a hundred songs without blinking an eye, but I’ll try to keep it brief and find some balance.
Side A
“Child,” Loren Connors (with Suzanne Langille)
This song, from Connors’s 1993 album Hell’s Kitchen Park (and also included on As Roses Bow: Collected Airs 1992-2002), is the beating heart of the book. I was listening to a lot of Connors in general while writing Saint of the Narrows Street, and his tracks are mostly instrumental, but this one, with its hushed, ghostly vocals from Suzanne Langille, would be the first song I’d put on at five a.m. every morning when I sat down to begin work. In my dark house, it felt like something was passing from the song to me, that the song was building the tone of what I was writing. It’s a short song with incredible emotional heft. Gets me on the verge of tears every time I hear it. Langille’s lyrics hit hard: “Every night I see you flying in your dreams.” That your. I think about it in part as Fab’s song, the damaged child at the heart of the story, but it’s bigger than that too, a sort of trembling emotional undercurrent throughout.
“Get Rid of Him,” Dionne Warwick
This one’s for Risa, who is married to a bad man. The first part of the book finds her going from boiling point to breaking point after Sav aims an unloaded gun at her and Fab for kicks and then drunkenly assaults Giulia. Tonally, I feel like it’s a perfect (and unexpected) match for the proceedings in that stretch of the action, as Risa takes Warwick’s advice quite literally.
“I Won’t Last a Day Without You,” Paul Williams
Risa loves the cover of this song by the Carpenters and sings it to baby Fab. In my mind, Paul Williams’s original version plays on the soundtrack. I see Risa in her apartment, weeping, and then out walking on the block in the summer heat with Fab, pushing him in a stroller—a perfect song for a montage of their world as mother and son, capturing all the promise Risa sees in Fab, all the fear she has for his future. It’s not actually a song about a mother and son, but Risa feels it is and that’s all that matters.
“In the City,” White Lion
Until Nirvana came along and changed things for me when I was about thirteen, I was a hair metal kid. In a lot of ways, the book started with Chooch and his love of that music, which is really his only escape from reality. His favorite bands are Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Tesla, Anthrax, and White Lion. When we first meet him at the beginning of the book, he’s returned home from a show at a legendary heavy metal club on Sixty-Second Street called L’Amour (“the Rock Capital of Brooklyn,” pronounced by patrons as “La-Morz”). White Lion was a fixture there. They formed as a band in 1983 and one of the key members was guitarist Vito Bratta, an Italian American from across the bridge in Staten Island—he would’ve been a hero to guys like Chooch and Sav. White Lion’s debut album, Fight to Survive, which includes “In the City,” came out in late 1985. The action of part one of the book is set in August ’86, and Chooch listens to this album and this song in the sad sanctuary of his room before Risa calls on him to help with a situation that’s gotten out of control.
“Some Say (I Got Devil),” Melanie
This one’s for Giulia. As the action of the book briefly drifts to upstate New York in part one, Giulia, Risa, and Chooch pass the site of the original Woodstock in Bethel, and Giulia reflects on what it might’ve been like to be there. She imagines having had the chance to see Melanie, whose albums she loves. Giulia would’ve been a girl when Melanie’s Gather Me came out in 1971, and I picture her spinning it on a little raggedy suitcase turntable and obsessing over this song. Melanie also has New York City roots—Robert Christgau called her “Edith Piaf as Brooklyn waif” (even though she was from Astoria, Queens.)
Side B
“Saints Around My Neck,” Come
This one’s for me. It sounds like I want the book to sound. It’s an epic song—one that feels like time passing somehow, the instrumental movements giving way to Thalia Zedek’s thundering voice. It scraps and scrapes and pulls. There’s so much pain in it. I love the title, of course, and it resonates with my title (the name of the block that most of the action of the book takes place on). “Everyone’s sick / with saints around their necks” is one of my favorite lines ever, and it tells the story of my characters.
“Born to Lose,” Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers
Giulia’s ex-boyfriend, Marco, the now-famous rock star that she yearns for, cutting pictures of him from music magazines and daydreaming about what her life might’ve been like if they’d stayed together, is a presence throughout the book. He’s a Johnny Thunders type, and—back when they were together—Giulia remembers listening to L.A.M.F. with him. Thematically, this song hits the nail on the head in terms of the how doomed these characters are. Favorite lyric: “Living in the city / it will eat out, eat out your heart.”
“No Tomorrow,” The Dictators
Though they’re New York City through and through, proto-punk band the Dictators got their start in 1972 in the Hudson Valley, where founding member Andy “Adny” Shernoff attended the State University of New York at New Paltz (I went to college there in the late ’90s). There’s an urgency to this song—and the album that it’s from, 1978’s Bloodbrothers—that really speaks to the desperation of my characters. “No Tomorrow” is something Fab might get tattooed on his arm.
“You Know More Than I Know,” John Cale
This John Cale song (from his fourth solo album, 1974’s Fear) was used beautifully in a bar scene in Celine Song’s 2023 film Past Lives, and it’s perfect for one of the many bar scenes in my book. It’s another song that just feels like the book—melancholy, searching. Even though the characters are more likely to hear Poison’s “Ride the Wind” on a jukebox (as Roberto Franzone and Sandra Carbonari do at the Wrong Number), this is the song I’d want to play for them.
“Afterwards,” Nina Nastasia
Not many albums in recent years have had the impact on me that Nastasia’s 2022 masterpiece Riderless Horse has. I’ve been a Nastasia fan since I picked up her debut Dogs off a recommendation shelf at my local record store in college back in 2000. She was prolific in the 2000s but then disappeared, finally releasing Riderless Horse after a twelve-year drought. It’s a powerful, haunting, brutal reckoning with grief and abuse. I was totally immersed in this album while working on Saint of the Narrows Street. “Afterwards” feels suited to Risa, who has had her life ripped to shreds. As the book winds down and things fade to black, I imagine it playing over the closing credits. Nastasia’s melodies wreck me. “I’m ready to live” is such a hopeful note to end on, and I hope Risa can feel that way down the road.
also at Largehearted Boy:
William Boyle’s playlist for his novel City of Margins
William Boyle’s playlist for his novel A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself
William Boyle’s playlist for his novel The Lonely Witness
William Boyle’s playlist for his story collection Death Don’t Have No Mercy
William Boyle’s playlist for his novel Gravesend
William Boyle is the author of eight books set in the southern Brooklyn neighborhood where he was born and raised, including his debut, Gravesend; the story collection Death Don’t Have No Mercy; The Lonely Witness, nominated for the Hammett Prize; A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself, an Amazon Best Book of 2019; City of Margins, a Washington Post Best Thriller and Mystery Book of 2020; and Shoot the Moonlight Out, listed by CrimeReads as one of the ten best noir novels of 2021. He currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi.