Never a Lovely So Real by Colin Asher

Author:Colin Asher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2019-02-22T16:00:00+00:00

After Nelson introduces the novel’s most important characters, he sets the plot in motion. Frankie ends up in the alley outside Zero Schwiefka’s one night with Louie Fomorowski and Sparrow, and when they begin arguing, Louie mocks Frankie for being an addict. “You’ll look me up ten thousand times to come,” he says. “’N on yer knees to beg me to take your money too.”

Until that moment, Sparrow has no idea Frankie is an addict, and Frankie can’t stand the thought of losing his friend’s admiration. He knows Louie is right as well, and can’t stand the thought of that either. “I want people like you knocked on the head,” he tells Louie. And when Louie laughs, Frankie snaps his neck and leaves his body in the alley.

Louie’s death sets in motion the chain of events that determines the course of Frankie’s life. The police begin to suspect that Frankie killed Louie almost immediately. Someone took the money Louie was holding when he died, and when Frankie begins to suspect Sparrow stole it, their relationship cools. They go shoplifting together, “just to do somethin’,” and the police catch Frankie in the act and send him to jail for several months.

Frankie is a diminished man when he’s released. Molly, whose love had been the most promising thing in his life, has left the neighborhood. Sophie has begun to lose her mind. He and Sparrow aren’t talking, he’s lost his touch with the cards, and he starts using morphine again. Once, he tells himself he’s going to get a library card “the minute” he finishes the shot of liquor in his hand—but he can’t even accomplish that much.

The police entrap Sparrow eventually, and after threatening him for weeks, they convince him to finger Frankie for Louie’s murder. They get an arrest warrant for Frankie, and their pursuit moves the story along from that point forward, but the cat-and-mouse dynamic of their chase and his evasion never become the book’s primary focus because there’s no doubt who killed Louie—Sparrow knows, and so do Blind Piggy, Antek Witwicki, and everyone else in the neighborhood. There’s no doubt as to what will become of Frankie Machine either. He’s no survivor, but he is a dreamer, and the story remains compelling all the way through because he continues to believe he has a way out until his very last moments.

Frankie goes on the run to avoid the police, manages to find Molly, and then moves in with her. She finds purpose and contentment in nursing him off morphine, but then Drunkie John finds them, extorts them, and then calls the police and tells them where Frankie is hiding.

Frankie finally succumbs then. He leads the police on a chase, gets away, and hides in a cheap hotel room. He’s alone, and he’s been shot, and he’s bleeding. “What am I waitin’ for?” he asks himself. “For the ice in the blood to reach the heart? Or for the tread of heavy boots following a flashlight up the stairs?”

He takes a double strand of twine, secures it to the ceiling, and fashions a noose.

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