Customer Reviews

Never Come Morning

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I noticed in another customer review of this book that two key pieces of plot information are provided in the review itself. That is something no reviewer should ever do. Don't let that blemish keep you from buying this remarkable book. Never Come Morning is one of the finest novels you will ever read. This is Catcher In The Rye for the rest of us, for everyone who grew up more worldy than Holden Caufield.

Algren opens a window on Chicago's ethnic, inner city streets. The sights, sounds, smells, words and music of Chicago in the late 1940's are right there in front of you. He then points his highly accurate lens on his character's hearts, minds, concerns, fears, worries, struggles, hopes & dreams.

Never Come Morning is a lyrical, poetic work of fiction that's nonetheless so realistic it could have been yanked straight from the headlines of any city's newspapers, in any era, from the 1940's straight through to 2004. The novel describes the lives of several teenagers living on Chicago's Near Northwest side, in the late 1940's. It is realistic yet never exploitive, heart-wrenching yet never heavy handed.

Those familar with Chicago neighborhoods will delight in seeing The Triangle, Riverview, Humboldt Park, Division Street, Chicago Avenue, Western Avenue, Milwaukee Avenue, Oak Street Beach and Logan Square referenced in print. As El trains fly overhead - some down tracks still with us and some down tracks long-gone - you will be astounded at how well this writer has captured the Chicago of your youth.

Those familar with Chicago characters like the ones in this novel (Bruno Bicek, Steffi Rostenkowski, Catfoot Nowagrodski, Fingers Idzikowski, Fireball Kodadek, Bibleback Watrobinski, Casey Benkowski, Momma Tomek and The Barber) will have to put the book down and take a walk outside. The memories that come flooding back will be too STRONG, and too REAL.

Anyone who's lived in a neighborhood where kids run the nighttime streets, anyone who's ever hung out on a corner, tossed dice against a warehouse wall, walked a freight yard, played ball for a Park District League, been to Riverview, swam at Oak Street or dated a girl from the neighborhood will be shocked from the sheer force of recognition this amazing novel provides.

Yet even those who've never set foot in Chicago will be spellbound by this remarkable, poetic novel about tough kids growing up under tough conditions in a tough town. A must read for anyone interested in American Realism, and/or fiction carved from real life.

Any writer can create a sympathetic character and maintain the reader's sympathy throughout a work. A good writer can create an unsympathetic character that gains our sympathy in the course of a story. But a truly great writer creates a very real character that has our sympathy at first, who then completely loses it, only to regain it at the end. This is what Nelson Algren excels at - the characters in Never Come Morning may not be like the people you know, but they exist in the real world as much as they live in Algren's Chicago. They are not perfect, in fact they are all too human--greedy, lustful, and stupid--products of an environment that does not forgive human nature. It is a compelling story that seems more powerful, more modern, more realistic than anything written in the last 20 years. Algren's prose combines the power of a heavyweight's best right hand with the meticulous detail of a fine tailored suit. Once you've read Algren, you will never read anything the same way again.

Algren narrates the fall of Bruno Lefty Bicek, small-time hood and prize-fighter. Bicek comes alive under Algren's pen - not a hero, not a villain, but all too human, capable of love and of cowardice. Not as well-known as _The Man With the Golden Arm_ nor _A Walk On the Wild Side_, but, in my opinion, the equal of the first and superior to the second.

Never come morning is a exquisite novel of pain and dark urban reality. What makes Algren a better writer than so many others who work in this mileiu is that he doesn't moralize or create one-dimensional heroes. His characters pull you in because they have the complexity and tragic failings of real people. The imagery walks the line between the surreal and the actual, dreams interwoven with the brutal waking reality of inner-city poverty. This book alone puts Algren, who never got much fame and certainly not fortune for his work, on the map of great American writers.

Bruno 'Lefty' Bicek is a Polak on the Polak side of Division Street. He has day dreams of being admired; a hero in baseball or boxing. He daydreams of beating cheating opponents by playing clean; winning through skill alone. And he has his girl, Steffi R.
But with corruption everywhere,the police able to pick up and put away on a whim, and the need to be 'regular' with the gang members sees Lefty end up as all Division Street hoods do. Life beat out of them,dreams staying daydreams. Lefty loses his soul when he does nothing to stop Steffi being gang raped by the guys.He needed to keep 'regular'.

As ever, Algren never sanatises or justifies or explains. Its just written how it is, and 'Never Come Morning' is perhaps his most frank portrayal. It has few-if any-of the humour that creeps in his other novels.

Having read 'The Man With The Golden Arm', 'Walk on the Wild Side' 'Neon Wilderness' and now 'Never Come Morning' I know two things. First, Algren is a remarkable and socially observent writter. Second, he basically just writes the same story over and over with slightly different takes; from slightly different angles.
All the same things were present in 'Never Come..' as in the other Algrens I've read. The line up;Lefty's reasoning to the Captain as to why his gang had shaved heads came from a short story in 'Neon Wilderness' the heists are slight variations, the boxing accounts are the same etc etc.
This doesn't make Algren anything other than what he is-a great (Thomas Wolfe just wrote 'Look Homeward Angel' over and over again with slight variations and nobody disputes his greatness) it just means that his scope is limited, and 'Neon Wilderness' would perhaps be all you ever need to read to get the whole Algren repartee.
But for all that-and even though Algrens Chicago is long since dead-this is great reading

Bruno Bicek and Steffi R. have dreams beyond the reality of their Chicago existence and the nightmarish control of the Barber, Bonifacy Konstantine. Bruno Bicek is a boxing contender and Steffi R. is the girlfriend he let be gang-raped. The Barber knows this and that Bruno Bicek has murdered one of the gang. The Barber has Steffi R. in his grasp and has no intention of letting her go. Bruno Bicek feels sure of his chances and intends taking her from him. But the Barber holds all the cards and, for Bruno Bicek and Steffi R. there will be no bright morning.

Never Come Morning has its moments: the fight scenes at the start and end of the book; the scenes in which the characters consider their lives, in a style that will be made much use of in The Man with the Golden Arm. Everything else is dark and gritty, but is not especially effective within the story because of its apparent inclusion for the sake of something anecdotal in order to flesh out the characters' traits and thoughts. In addition, Nelson Algren makes reading this book a chore like he did with The Man with the Golden Arm, by having rapid changes of viewpoint in scenes with a multiplicity of characters. This would have been quite benign given a more omniscient writing style like Fritz Leiber's, but is very distracting here.

Nevertheless, Never Come Morning is engaging, and, taken in overview, is a very satisfactory read, which demonstrates the power in Nelson Algren's writing. A power that in subsequent works, grows and grows.

This is a grim and authentic depiction of the slum dwelling residents of the Polish Triangle, a downtrodden district only minutes removed the Chicago Loop and a lifetime removed from the hotels, restaurants and stores which catered to the city's elite. It is a place where children scavenge for discarded bottles in hope of collecting a two cent deposit refund for each empty that they can return.

Nelson Algren lived amongst the characters that he described in his novels. He provides a solid description of life along Ashland and Milwaukee Avenues and Division Street when the region was inhabited by Poles who struggling to earn enough to be described as blue collar or working poor. Drunkeness, gambling and prostitution once flourished in these environs. Rapists and thieves functioned in the alleyways with little interference from the police.

Frequently, books feature blurbs from other writers, celebrities and notables. Sometimes, after tossing aside a book in disgust after a dull read, I wondered whether or not the persons who contributed the praise brimming blurbs ever bothered to actually read the books that they were trumpeting? Were those people simply reciprocating favors from their friends? "Never Come Morning" contained one blurb that I could not dismiss so lightly: novelist Ernest Hemingway, who knew something about Chicago and something about writing, commended Nelson Algren's book.

Hemingway was right on the money. This book is a worthy companion to those of Farrell, Motley and Dreiser.

From previous reviews, I got the idea that "Never come Morning" would be gritty, and a masterpiece. Well, that's not the case. It is quite gritty, with EVERYONE a crook, from a Polish barber who is also a pimp, from the one-eyed police detective. The story follows Bruno, a thug who dreams of well..being the Great White Hope. Of course, we know he's a thug, and will always be nothing but a thug. Bruno and his thuggish friends talk in a Chicago dialect that grates on your nerves. Algren is not Mark Twain, so it further alienates the reader when you want to hear English you can recognize. I felt zero sypathy for Bruno's predicament, and I felt sick that Steffi would see anything in this character.