Dark, slum-ridden Philly book. Man's wonderful sister- above her environment - kills herself and brother spends the days wondering who caused her harm and her own suicide. He tracks that through the ugly bars and wharfs and finally finds who it was! In the meantime he marries (and then annuls) a beautiful uptown girl. Message: don't marry out of your class. So he goes back to the awful Bella who had earlier that day put out a hit on him. Whew. Good propulsive dark alley action. ( )

Naif che nasconde contenuti profondi o naif e basta? Propendo per la seconda.... ( )

Riding through life on a fourth class ticket, he called it. It was a rough neighborhood, not safe for man or woman. It was full of rundown tenements and people trying to forget themselves, forget their miserable lives. Kerrigan's teenage sister had slashed her throat in the alley following a brutal rape and beating. His brother subsisted on candy bars and whatever booze he could get his hands on. It was a hot summer and Dugan's was a good place to cool off. The men there passed the time with nothing better to do. This is a story about life in the hard slums of Vernon Street by the docks. Not a place for the weak or timid souls. It's a story of the pain that Kerrigan lives with as he goes night after night to the bloodstained alley where his angelic sister left this earth. It's the story about a pair of uptown siblings who try slumming it because there is something raw and honest there. It's a story about love and passion and the fact that there's no escape ever. Goodis was the poet of Philadelphia's mean streets and everything he wrote was pretty much a masterpiece. ( )