sandro mallet

In 'Edgewater Angels', Sandro Mallet tells the stories of gangbanging in a powerful manner that never hesitates to hit the reader upside the head with strong connected cram words to convey his point of view. His stories are powerful vignettes of a subculture of urban survival. Sunny Toomer is the sort of ringleader of a group of twelve year old boys who are making an instant leap from the playtime of childhood to a life of violence and hopelessness in the ugly projects of San Pedro. Meallet proves himself to be a master of showing, not telling, as he portrays the short lives and sad deaths of his characters. Domestic violence is the default family behavior if a father lives at home. But for Sunny and most of his friends, fathers are an ever-looming absence in their lives. Their mothers run through lovers varying from violent to homicidal. The children have no anchor, no center, nothing to attract them except the potential for mischief that rapidly and easily escalates to GTA. Goaded by the boyfriends and the community elders, young men grown hard and fast, theft and violence are a natural. Sunny manages an occasional escape to the quietude of the library, but it's not too long before he's pulled into the street to deliver a package or drive a car.
Meallet carries the reader along on a tide of together compound words that eventually becomes natural. Because he's not telling the story in a typical novelistic arc, his characters take a while to coalesce. In the various vignettes Meallet stands out as a creator of powerful indelible scenes. A recently paroled father tells his son and Sunny the facts of life sitting in a car while parked at Point Fermin, overlooking the silvered Pacific Ocean. Two twelve-year olds experience the explosive freedom of driving a car for the first time through the slums of Los Angeles. Men die, babies are born, and Meallet's surreal language verges on the supernatural. 'Edgewater Angels' has a lot of powerful scenes.