The Crossroads (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

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 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.

For a book in which there are no people with whom to greatly empathise, with the possible exception of the young teenage boy at the centre of the story, I was still interested in them all right to the end. With a cast drawn from a small Italian town and its rural outskirts, the actions of each character contribute in unexpected ways to ultimately tragic events, which somehow manage at the same time to seem inevitable. The pace of the narrative reaches almost breakneck speed in the latter third of the book as the author cuts from character to character, bringing their individual contributions to events to a conclusion.

One of the strengths of this novel is the way the author manages to make you feel some sympathy for characters who are far from perfect, dislikeable even, because they are people, and people get caught up in events they didn't intend to get caught up in, at least not in the way they unfold, and turn out.

A "real-life" thriller, one in which people are stupid, unlucky, unwise or unthinking. I enjoyed it very much.

After reading Niccolo Ammaniti's I'm Not Scared, which was full of elegant prose, subtle characterisation and a cleverly constructed story, I was excited when I found Crossroads in my local bookshop. I even paid £10.99 for the pleasure. But I'm still questioning if it was worth it.

In the first 10 pages, I knew that this wasn't the Ammaniti book I was expecting. Straight off the bat, the violence, the gritty realism and the effing and blinding jumped off the page, in an explosive introduction to the main characters. All preconceptions were immediately dispelled. (It's always dangerous to expect a certain style of writing from an author - it often leads to disappointment.) I gradually began to enjoy the shocks and general bleakness of this cartoon like assortment of oddball characters.

The story follows a teenage boy, Cristiano Zena, who lives a squalid existence in a pre-fab house that his alcoholic, nazi loving father, Rino, built while a construction worker years before. Rino has a rag tag pair of friends, Danilo and Quattro Formaggi (because he loves that flavour of pizza) each of whom has fallen on hard times and join Rino, the aggressive and unpredictable leader, for drinking sessions and half heated attempts to get labouring work.

This is a book of interweaving stories, all connecting to this trio of adults who have a plan to ram raid a cash machine, split the loot and make better lives for themselves. In great heist-gone-wrong tradition, nothing goes as planned and everyone's lives are affected dramatically as a result.

There is a lot of fun to be had here, but I couldn't help thinking that Ammaniti was trying too hard to make his characters `quirky;' that this was written with one eye on Hollywood, thinking of the film rights with every outrageous act.

It isn't a patch on I'm Not Scared, and that's perhaps why I was so disappointed. There was also nothing here that showed the subtlety and nuance either. If I am Not Scared is a whisper, then this is a bloody great mega-phone boom. I never fully engaged with these characters- they felt like part of a graphic novel and never quite believable.

It reminded me of Tim Willocks (great writer, filmic to the max) in the sense that these books feel like the precursor to a hollywood film.

Don't get me wrong, Ammaniti has done a god job here, but with such genius as I'm Not Scared to live up to, it's really no wonder this one falls short.

Fun, but self conscious, gritty but bitty...