Aeneas wandered and so Danny will, too.
Aeneas was sent to found a new city. His wife disappeared.
Danny Ryan flees the mayhem in Rhode Island. His wife died of cancer.
Danny is a hunted animal, looking for a new home. And life.
Don Winslow makes no bones about the framework and inspiration for his trilogy: The Aeneid. And the whole Trojan Horse cycle. Smarter folks than me can draw sharper comparisons, but the epic quality is unmistakable—City on Fire followed by this one, City of Dreams. (City in Ruins due next year.)
Epic, yes. And funny, too? How can a book filled with crude characters saying and thinking and doing so many crude and violent things, also carry a sustained stretch of humor? Well, it’s Danny’s crew, The Altar Boys, and the way they try to ingratiate themselves into a Hollywood production of a movie called “Providence.” (The title is no coincidence. Danny’s Irish mob roots are in Rhode Island.) The movie causes plenty of friction as our mobsters wrestle with whether their lives can be co-opted so easily for big-screen adaptation. They even, hilariously, request producer credit.
For a guy trying to hide, getting mixed up in Hollywood would not seem like a logical choice for Danny Ryan but Winslow milks this magically, effortlessly. And much of City of Dreams shows Danny as a gangster in a strange land grappling with everyday matters like parenting his 18-month-old son Ian and caring for his elderly father.
Danny has all sorts of problems including the two million dollars’ worth of heroin he dumped the ocean back in Rhode Island, the crooked FBI agent he killed, the Italian mob that wants his head, and also the head of a Mexican drug cartel who would like to see Danny taken down. Oh, and Danny is pretty much broke. He could use a job. His plan to end the wars has backfired. Completely.
It’s 1988, two years since City in Ruins. Danny would like to leave it all the killing behind. He even blames his wife’s cancer and her death on the mob wars because the cancer came on—“like the grief brew from her heart and spread through her chest”—after her brother was killed.
Still, once he reaches the west coast, Danny thinks he can turn the corner.
“Danny knows guys from back in the day. Guys who had made money, plenty to live on straight and just couldn’t do it. They got too bored. They missed the action, the adrenaline, so they got back in. He knows guys who got back in just because they missed the other guys. Missed the hanging out, the jokes, the ball busting, the laughs.
“A few of them are spending the rest of their lives in the joint.
“That ain’t him.
“He doesn’t miss it.
At all.”
But Danny has a heart. His memories of his late wife will tell you all you need to know about Danny. He avoids bloodshed at a key moment because he’s got a conscience and morals—it’s his fatal flaw and it brings further complications. Always.
Winslow keeps a full cast of characters afloat—we see the story from a variety of perspectives and angles. Violence abounds. And sex. You’re not going to read this for tips on how to express yourself better as woke citizen of 2023. There is a ton of Hollywood chatter and talk. Winslow’s style is lively. He refuses to get bogged down. The pages rocket along.
And then comes Chapter 22. It’s a piece of work, a Joyce-ian fever dream. It’s stream-of-monsters-consciousness and it comes out of nowhere, wonderfully, after so many punchy, blunt chapters. Desperate Danny, distraught Danny. He’s been squeezed and pressured. He’s been high and low. He’s completely strung out and wrestling with all his demons. “The forgiven fly, the unforgiven are earthbound, chained to the ground by our sins those heavy chains we groan here we die here.”
Will Danny escape? Will Danny live to see his dreams come true? Can he escape the undertow?
City of Dreams is highly entertaining, start to finish, and the title alone suggests that City in Ruins will find Danny in the wasteland once again, still searching for his new home.
++
Previously reviewed: City on FIre
Don't Need A Diagram 