Jim DeFilipi's Duck Alley

Duck Alley

Permanent Press, $24 hard

Jim DeFilippi's second novel, Duck Alley, is a curious mixture of the overfamiliar and the unexpected. The friendship of childhood buddies Jay Tasti and Albert Niklozak is put to the test when, as adults, one is charged for murder and the other must testify against him. Before this point, however, we must wade through 100 pages of nostalgic reminiscence about growing up in the tough Long Island neighborhood of Duck Alley, and there's very little plot to anchor some colorful and often hilarious anecdotes. The rememberance of a New York-area boyhood in the Fifties and Sixties has been done hundreds of times, and hence the overfamiliar ring: wiseacre pranks, neighborhood baseball games, a colorful Italian family with two wacky uncles, 15-cent ice cream bars, a stolen bottle of gin sipped under the boardwalk. DeFilippi is laying the tracks for flashbacks which will be significant later, but he piles it on thick and takes too long doing it.

The story does pick up after the first third, and events then move along at a well-timed pace. References to the two men's childhood together are expertly interlaced with current events to reveal the complexity of a friendship which, the flashbacks reveal, is destined to end up as it does. The unexpected aspects of the novel are a few crucial and heartbreaking plot twists, as well as the skill with which DeFilippi wrings out profound insight after such a slow start. Loyalty, honesty, trust, communication, and responsibility in friendship are all examined more through plot device than analysis, making the issues salient and applicable to a reader's own experience. Once past the narrator's indulgent trip down Memory Lane, a cautionary, thoughtful tale emerges whose lessons are, ultimately, worth the wait.