As God Commands

Heartbreaking book about a group of friends with wild dreams to make their lives better and how it all goes wrong one stormy night in Italy, and a coming of age story about a 14 year old who finds himself picking up the pieces of their disastrous decisions. Cristiano and his father Reno lead a bleak life on the margins in a run-down house cluttered with anger, resentment and blame. Reno and his friends want to rob a bank while Cristiano just wants to get from one day to the next. What happens one night will change their lives forever. This book was impossible to put down and impossible to forget.

Brutal, messy, bleak, but hysterical in places. Manages to be both completely character driven and not afraid of balls-to-the-wall action. Did not predict how things were going to work out at all, but the progressions flowed, and I didn't feel played. I was engrossed. Not an easy read, content-wise, but beautifully done.

Ammaniti is utterly brilliant. I read "I'll Steal You Away" last year, and it was a devastating experience. One of the funniest, sadest, grittiest and moving books I have ever read. It took me weeks to get over it. This is perhaps not quite as successful - but its still much better than 95% of other writing. In the 80s there was a literary movement called Dirty Realism in the US; writers like Richard Ford and Jayne Anne Philips writing about the day to day people leading normal, gritty, working class lives. Ammaniti takes this to another level - he focuses on outsiders, in an Italy a million miles away from the tourist trail, the fashion centres and the historical monuments. His characters live at the bottom of the pile - and in this show more case comprise a fascist labourer, the village idiot (due to an accident with some power cables) and an alcoholic failing to get over the death of his daughter. This unlikely trio plan a ram raid, and the build up to the raid, and the consequences in the days after, form the basis of the plot. As always with Ammaniti, the central character is an adolescent boy, forced to become an adult before his time, let down by all the adults around him, making poor choices in impossible situations. Cristiano Zena is actually not as memorable a character as some of Ammanitii's other adolescent heros, and you may think that some of the acts he carries out may be logistically impossible for a 13 yr old boy. In fact, the characterisation of Fabiana Ponticelli, local teenage beauty and the exact opposite in every way to Cristiano, is perhaps better. Never the less Ammaniti brings to life Cristiano's small, fragile and hopeless world and the relationship between him and his appalling (to our eyes, not to Cristiano's) fascist father, is beautifuly brought to life.

One gripe I do have is with the title. In Italian the title is "As God Commands" - and this is a much better title. Many of the characters beleive they are in the hands of God, or fate, and indeed each action taken leads inexorably to everything that could go wrong with the raid, going wrong, with consequences it would have been impossible for anyone to predict.
Another quibble is that I was utterly engaged until "The Night" but in the aftermath, Ammanitti seems a little unsure of what to do with some of his characters, especially Cristiano. The end was somewhat unsatisfying - which is why I say that its not quite as good as "I'll Steal You Away". But still excellent, and highly recommended. But be warned - pick up an Ammanniti and say goodbye to any other plans for the day. He's impossible to put down show less

Very nice book, very chaotic again and most of all : where in "Dio's" name does Ammaniti finds the inspiration for the endless row of losers and unlucky bastards in his novels. It's amazing, some character descriptions are so real, it's like they live next to you.
You can only feel sorry for them but then again they tend to get mixed up in the most outrageous situations that it becomes hilarious. All there adventures are so off limits that they make you feel bad, because of the reader's knowledge that things will end badly, but they also make you laugh by the way Ammaniti describes the course of events.
Great novel, great writer.

A difficult one to review this. Very well written and an enjoyable read. Funny in the first half but getting more serious in the second, while ending in despair, which is part of the issue I have with this novel: in the beginning you are invited to laugh at these crazy characters but at the end you have to take them 100% serious in what becomes almost a pamphlet against modern society. The author's style is so convincing that he almost pulls off this tour de force. Almost, but not quite.

Cristiano’s life with his father may not be the best, but he’s not prepared to give it up. At thirteen, he knows he’s leaving school to work with his father, and all that’s important is keeping his social worker happy so that he doesn’t get taken away. Cristiano’s father, Rino, and his two friends Quattro Formaggi and Danilo Aprea are not as happy with their lives, especially when their manual labor jobs are given over to foreign workers. So Danilo decides to launch the perfect crime, and on one stormy night, the men attempt to put the plan into action. None of them foresee the consequences.

At first, I will admit that I wasn’t as drawn into this book as I was with I’m Not Scared. At one point Cristiano writes an essay show more about how Hitler was good and how foreigners are bad, and I wasn’t sure at all I was going to like this book. That, however, soon ended, and about halfway through the crime was attempted, and then I couldn’t put this book down. What happened after that was completely unpredictable and totally gripping, and I had to read on to see what happened.

Despite Cristiano’s and Rino’s attitudes, too, I could see the bitterness that drove them. They’re not educated enough to understand why certain things are wrong, so even though I didn’t always like them or agree with them at all, at least I knew where they were coming from and how they came to have the wrong ideas. I could blame the system, rather than the people, for their ignorant and terrifying attitudes. And the father-son relationship was incredibly heartwarming and realistic. They don’t always know what they’re doing or why they’re doing it, but they really love each other in the midst of all their hardships.

Really, this book is all about the failure of “the system”. Hardworking respectable men are unable to work because foreigners will work for less, and of course the companies don’t care if they have to lay off the men they’ve employed for 20 years. Mentally ill people get poor care and aren’t acknowledged at all, given no help despite the fact that they’ve become incapable of work. The social worker in the book doesn’t even look at Cristiano’s bedroom, and when he does, he’s beyond caring. I don’t think that he should have separated Cristiano from his father, although perhaps others would disagree, but the facade these two are capable of putting on for him, plus what he thinks makes a family, is almost laughable.

So, once again, Ammaniti has delivered a thriller that really causes his readers to think. His writing is crude at times – he spares no details in certain matters – and often violent, but he’s talented nonetheless. I do feel that I have to warn readers that a sexual crime is attempted in this book and it made me very uncomfortable, so it may do the same to you. Regardless, though, The Crossroads is a great read, and I can definitely recommend it as an addictive, thrilling book that will keep you up all night just to finish it.

http://chikune.com/blog/?p=2149 show less

Yet another superb novel from Ammaniti (see also "Steal You Away" and "I 'm Not Scared"). Without any sentiment he draws the compelling grimness that is life for those on the margins. It is a story extremely well told (and I guess very well translated). The main characters sit around and drink alcohol to excess, smoke bongs, and make plans. Unfortunately they are unable to envisage the consequences of their plans. When other unconnected events intersect with their plans; they have no positive way of dealing with the outcomes.

The images stay with you and unanswered questions about modern society rattle aroound in your head for weeks afterwards.