"...LOSING TRACK OF GOD, LOSING TRACK OF PURPOSE IN LIFE...": SAINT OF NARROWS STREET'S WILLIAM BOYLE

Few crime authors capture community like William Boyle. He captures a working class Brooklyn, mainly on the turn of the millenium. In his latest Saint Of Narrows Street, he jumps across almost two decades in the lives of a Rissa, a young woman who accidentally kills her abusive husband, her sister Guila and Chooch, a man who pines for her, who both help her cover up the killing, and Rissa's son Sav, growing up in the shadow of the secret. Each jump in time hits in a couple of days where people get close to the truth, including Father Tim, a priest with a gambling problem who tries to blackmail Rissa, causing tragedy all around. Mr. Boyle talked about the book, Brooklyn, parenting, and writing with us.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: Which came first, the theme of how a dark secret affects a family or the story structure of hopping across several years, looking at characters in a couple of days?

WILLIAM BOYLE: The first draft of what would become this book was set over one summer night in 1986. What happens at the end of the first chapter of the finished book did not happen in that early version. Both the theme and the time structure occurred to me as I was in the early stages of reconfiguring the book, building around the characters and the place. 

S,M.: Did you think a lot about the time in between those jumps for the characters?

W.M.: I did. I love the idea that what’s happened during those stretches of time is boiling under the surface. Obviously, change is most apparent in Fab, who is eight months old when we first meet him, five in part two, twelve in part three, and eighteen in part four. You can feel how time has passed in his character. 

S.M.: Risa is an interesting character in that you find yourself wondering if her actions are for her son or herself. How did you approach her in the writing?

W.M.: It’s Risa’s book, really. I didn’t know that at first, but it became apparent over time. She is someone who has played by the rules, lived something of a buttoned-up life, faithful, loyal, religious, a good mother. Her ideas about the world shatter over time, initiated by what happens that night with Sav. For me, at the heart of the book, is Risa’s slow descent into losing her faith, tangling with the idea that everything’s random, losing track of God, losing track of purpose in life.   

S.M.: Father Tim is a great and unique antagonist. How did you come up with him?

W.B.: He was always there hovering in the background of the book. I wrote part three after I’d written part four, and he just kind of stumbled in and played a key role in that part. It wasn’t until my editor suggested making him a POV character that I really started to have more fun with him. I was thinking a lot about Brad Dourif in the 1992 bad priest movie Final Judgement. Father Tim’s POV sections were also inspired by Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence.

S.M.: Motherhood or parenting plays a big part of the story. What did you want to explore with that?

W.B.: I was thinking a lot about the paranoia and worry and fear that comes with being a parent. I’ve got two kids and I’m so worried about them all the time. What’s going on now. Their futures. Ways I fucked up in the past. I’m an only child, and I grew up with just my mom—I go back a lot to the ways she must’ve worried about me when I was a teenager. That made its way into Risa’s interiority.   

S.M.: You write about the New York neighborhood you grew up in and have carved out a life for yourself in Mississippi. Do you see more similarities or differences between the two?

W.B.: There are obvious cultural differences, but the places aren’t as different as people would guess. Neighborhoods can feel a lot like small towns, especially on the edges of the city. Gossip. Everyone in everyone else’s business. Lots of bullshit. Feeling trapped. Yearning for escape. The memories of certain people and places and events that haunt us. I came to Mississippi because I’m a huge fan of the writer Larry Brown, and I wanted to write about southern Brooklyn the way he wrote about northern Mississippi. Being here for so long has definitely shaped my approach to how I write about home, though I can’t quite articulate how.