Edgewater Angels: A Novel [Hardcover]

Sandro Meallet (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 17, 2001

Authentic voices from the poor are very rare. Sandro Meallet conveys both the random, often terrifying nature of everyday violence, and the appealing sense of community, that make up the world of Edgewater Angels.

There are neighborhoods where the folly of youth is just a myth?where adolescence is solely about survival. And there are neighborhoods where the sound of firecrackers might be mistaken for gunfire, but never the other way around. Neighborhoods where wearing the countenance of an absentminded daydream might be mistaken for a silent challenge for turf, and asking someone if they have a problem may cost you your life. But even in the harshest places, neighborhoods do cultivate a feeling of community. And while the people who live in those places are invisible and often ignored by the rest of the world, every once in a while these communities, such as they are, manage to produce a kid who survives.

A young boy whose life is like a single rose growing in a forgotten lot is the narrator of Edgewater Angels. While his world is ugly from the outside, through him we are able to see the beauty, the humor, and the pain of life in a tiny part of San Pedro, California. With a style all his own, Sandro Meallet gives us a unique story that is serious yet playful, daring in aim, and absolutely captivating.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Toomer, the precocious narrator of this likable first novel, is a young adolescent in the San Pedro section of L.A., where gang violence is a given, absentee fathers are preferred to the live-in kind who get "so so mad" and futures are bleak. The sense of community is strong, however; as the novel begins, gang warfare has ceased so the neighborhood can present a unified front to the LAPD, or "rollers." Toomer narrates in the first-person plural, speaking for a generation of ghetto kids who have cobbled together a community based on something other than violence. Meallet, who grew up in San Pedro, reproduces the infectious slang of southern California youth, characterized by the invention of amalgamated adjectives: "a you-guys-are-sorry gigglesound." His prose is swift-paced and conversational, but the series of disjunctive subplots the wonder of a first car, forays into petty crime, the revelation of sexual secrets by a friend's father, a fantastical narrative about Toomer's own missing father disrupt the arc of the narrative, making this feel like a series of short stories forced into novel form. The book is a portrait of the artist as a young thug, and despite Toomer's communal voice, the escape from ghetto life (implied and made true by Meallet's own success) appears to be an individual one, based on Toomer's clandestine interest in classical music and secret forays to the local library. Nothing detracts from the punch of the ending, in which Toomer and his buddies give an anonymous homeless man a funeral and help a wounded woman give birth, acts of kindness giving truth to the anonymous man's dying words: "How wonderful you've become... like angels." Agent, Leigh Feldman. (On sale, July 17)

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

However, in Meallet's semiautobiographical first novel, Sonny Toomer describes his experiences with a sense of humor and a warmth that entice the reader into the San Pedro, CA, slums. Nothing about Toomer's life is easy. By the time he is five, he knows about ducking bullets; a pick up football game becomes a confrontation between rival gangs; and a favor for a friend's stepfather results in a near-arrest by the police. The overriding theme here is the absence of male role models. Toomer has heard from his father only twice, and his mother is a beautiful, eccentric woman with a habit of choosing the wrong men, including one whose ideal of family togetherness includes murder. His uncles are stupid, violent petty criminals, and his friends' fathers are also violent, usually doing time or just released. Yet throughout, Toomer retains an innate sense of decency. What makes this novel particularly appealing is the unique narrative voice, which combines words to create a vivid new descriptive language as attractive as the narrator himself. Highly recommended for public libraries. Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (July 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038550151X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385501514
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,080,873 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very absorbing, poignant novel., August 15, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Edgewater Angels: A Novel (Hardcover)

I read this book because the author is a friend of a friend, etc. In such cases I usually expect to be impressed, inspired to write my own stuff, heartened to know a published young writer with lots of potential. But to my surprise, I was immediately sucked into this book. The language is fresh and exciting, the characters and conflicts extremely believeable, but most importantly, the author has some great stories to tell. I have passed the book along to several friends who are now anxiously sucked in as I was a week ago. And I find myself running words together and inventing new ones in both writing and speech (in the style of the author, certainly not on account of a drinking problem). My only criticisms are that the prose is clunky in a few places (like, two times, so who cares?) and I was left at the end wanting a little more resolution, perhaps more a sense of how the many anecdotes hang together as a book. Neither is a major issue, though, and I expect any kinks in the author's execution to be long-since worked out by the time I get my paws on his next novel. I am looking forward to it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great book, September 17, 2001

By 

Annie Rojes (Carson, Ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Edgewater Angels: A Novel (Hardcover)

It starts off good then gets even more engrossing as you get to know Toomer better. I couldn't put it down and can't wait to meet the author at the local bookstore and coffee shop in San Pedro when he visits in November to find out how much is based on fact. The style is such that you really feel like Toomer is actually writing the story. The slang that he uses and problems that he comes up against are so real. It was sad to turn the page and get to the end.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Edgewater Angels, January 19, 2004

By 

Monique C. (Carson, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Edgewater Angels: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was very excited to read Edgewater Angels because I enjoy reading fiction novels that relate to kids my age. I was also excited because the story took place in Pedro. I recommend Edgewater Angels to all high school students because it will give them a chance to see how hard life was growing up in Pedro. Before I read this book, I really didn't care about what happens or goes on in Pedro. I just thought half of it was a very wealthy neighborhood where I attended school. Edgewater Angels made me see how hard life can be as a child growing up in a bad neighborhood. And it made me realize that my life compared to Sonny's isn't that hard. I now appreciate my surroundings more because now I see how it is to not have them.