Say That To My Face (Summer 2003)

Joey Frascone, Prete's Bronx-born, Yonkers-bred narrator, has a real reverence for the working-class toughs who populate these loosely interlocking stories: One Italian stallion has eyes like ''two homicides about to happen''; another is seen ''emanating his future...[a] future of work, neighborhood, family, and the beautiful poetry of routine.'' Reverence, however, is different from affection: Wistful Joey would gladly trade all the ambient machismo for a day in Holden Caulfield's vagabond shoes -- so long as he could retain his batting average and lady-killer looks. Perhaps that's why Joey ends up feeling a bit more synthetically literary than the people he describes. Nonetheless, Prete's stories are as casually virtuoso as a neighborhood knuckleball.