Teaching Angels to Fly

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Fourteen stories, many infused with the hard-edged realism of the ItalianAmerican neighborhood of Brooklyn's Bensonhurst, others shimmering with the enigmas of magic realism, make up this collection by the author of A Time for Wedding Cake . La Puma's tales bridge a variety of narrative styles, weaving unpredictably in and out of a fantasy world, with sudden interjections of lyricism and humor. The characters range from gangsters to angels, but all are confronted by the random hand of love. The bookie in ``In Delphine's Bed'' steals half a million dollars from two high rollers so he and his lover can live the good life, but they are tracked down by an unlikely nemesis. Perhaps a little mad with loneliness, Joe, the protagonist of ``Photograph,'' is in love with a ghost named Goldie. Unmoored from the conventional world, the story unreels through a shifting exchange dialogue means two for four voices, undifferentiated by quotation marks or narrative connection. In ``Lightning,'' the mother of an apprentice angel dispenses advice in the cadences of a Sicilian matriarch. ``Murderous Myrtle'' arrives at an assignation ``with ice in her blue eyes and a fresh razor blade between her teeth.'' La Puma's dialogue has perfect pitch; his maverick imagination marks him as a writer of real gifts. (June)

Library Journal

Readers familiar with La Puma's earlier collection of stories ( The Boys of Bensonhurst , LJ 2/1/87) and his novel ( A Time for Wedding Cake , Norton, 1990) will be delighted to return to the streets of his native Bensonhurst to experience more follies of Italian American life. In neighborhoods where garbage rotting in the alley competes with the fragrance of pastry wafting from the local bakery, La Puma's characters strive to hang onto whatever they can get. The gritty, down-to-earth descriptions of failed family life found in stories such as ``First Cousins,'' ``Cakes,'' ``Loose Change,'' and ``Number Ten for Potatoes'' ultimately are more successful than the attempts at magic realism, Brooklyn style, found in ``Lightning,'' ``Photograph,'' and ``The Four of Us.'' But this generous mix of the fantastic and the mundane will have broad appeal.-- Rita Ciresi, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park