Further reading on The End: reviews, interviews and prize pages

Salvatore Scibona's first novel, The End (Graywolf Press, 2008), drew a small, serious body of writing around it: trade reviews before publication, radio and newspaper interviews when it became a National Book Award finalist, prize announcements through 2009, and a second wave of attention when The New Yorker named him one of its "20 Under 40" in 2010. This page gathers the pieces that are still online, checked link by link, with a note on what each one is good for. It is an independent list. For a guide to the novel itself, start with our reader's guide to The End; for the author's career, see our profile of Scibona and his books.

A practical note before the list: several of the interviews talk about how the book ends and how its structure pays off. If you have not finished the novel, read the reviews first and save the interviews for afterward.

Reviews

• Kirkus Reviews on The End. The prepublication review from the spring of 2008. It is short, admiring and honest about the difficulty, calling the book "a demanding but rewarding novel likely to appeal to a very small audience." It is especially good on the way overheard talk in the carnival crowd turns menacing as the day goes on.
• Publishers Weekly on The End. A starred trade review that sets out the main characters and the Cleveland setting clearly, and admits that the prose can be hard going. Useful if you want the cast straight before starting.

The novel was published by a small press and its first newspaper reviews are harder to find online now than the interviews, which is why this section is short. The interviews below cover more of the ground.

Interviews and profiles

• NPR: "'The End' Is Beginning for First-Time Novelist". Lynn Neary's Weekend Edition interview, November 2008, a few days before the National Book Awards. Scibona reads the opening description of the neighborhood, explains how his grandparents' Cleveland and a real parish festival incident shaped the setting, and compares the book's structure to a Bach partita. The best single piece for a book group that wants to hear him talk about the novel.
• Los Angeles Times: "Seven questions with Salvatore Scibona". Carolyn Kellogg's Jacket Copy Q&A from December 2008. He describes the awards dinner, the year he spent in Catania, Sicily, the image of a man climbing stairs that started the book, and the ten years it took. Good on how a novel grows from one observed detail.
• Fiction Writers Review: "Interview with Salvatore Scibona: The End". Michael Hinken's long conversation from March 2009, the most detailed interview about the book. It covers the ending, the choice of title, the failure of faith that runs through the characters, and his working habits, including writing by hand before typing. Read it after you finish.
• ArtSake: "Salvatore Scibona talks The End". A June 2008 Q&A from the Massachusetts Cultural Council's blog, published soon after the book came out. Short, and interesting on how much control a novelist should keep over characters.
• Poets & Writers: "First Fiction: Our Annual Look at Summer's Debut Stars". The magazine's July/August 2008 debut feature, which included Scibona alongside Rivka Galchen, Nam Le, Leni Zumas and Preeta Samarasan. The online page is a summary of a print feature, but it is a neat snapshot of a strong year for first books.
• The New Yorker: "Holding Writers Accountable". A March 2009 Page-Turner post by Vicky Raab, written after the Young Lions award, in which Scibona answers how a writer plans to spend prize money in a recession. Brief and dry.
• The New Yorker: "Where I Learned to Read". Scibona's own 2011 essay about nearly failing high school in Ohio and finding his way to St. John's College. Not about the novel, but the best explanation of the reader behind it.

Prizes and lists

• National Book Foundation: The End. The official page for the book as a 2008 fiction finalist, with the publisher's summary of the story.
• The Guardian: "Don't call American literature insular". John Freeman's books blog post from October 2008 on that year's shortlist, which places Scibona among Aleksandar Hemon, Rachel Kushner, Peter Matthiessen and Marilynne Robinson, and notes his debt to the Icelandic novelist Halldór Laxness.
• NPR: "National Book Awards Honor Matthiessen in Fiction". The report from the November 2008 ceremony, with a short, funny description from Scibona of the room on Wall Street where the awards were given.
• Poets & Writers: "Scibona Wins Young Lions Fiction Award". The March 2009 announcement of the New York Public Library's award for writers aged 35 and under, listing the other finalists and quoting his advice to first-time authors.
• The New Yorker: "A Night with the Young Lions". Victoria Loustalot's scene piece from the same ceremony, including his startled reaction on winning.
• Whiting Foundation: Salvatore Scibona. The foundation's page for his 2009 Whiting Award in fiction, with a current biography.
• Vulture: "Broke Writers Rejoice After the 25th Whiting Awards". New York magazine's October 2009 report from the Whiting ceremony, a reminder of what an unsolicited prize can mean to a writer living on very little.
• ArtSake: "Salvatore Scibona wins Whiting Award". The Massachusetts Cultural Council's November 2009 note, which also lists the Young Lions and the Norman Mailer Cape Cod Award for Exceptional Writing.
• The New Yorker: "20 Under 40". The editors' introduction to the June 2010 fiction issue, which grouped Scibona with the writers of lyrical realism.
• The New Yorker: "The Kid". His story in that issue, about a small boy abandoned at an airport gate in Hamburg. It became the opening of his second novel.

For book groups

• Penguin Random House reader's guide to The End. The publisher's guide for the paperback, with an introduction to the five central characters, a short author note from that time and fourteen discussion topics. Several questions work well as openers; the one about the closing pages is best saved for the end of the evening.
• Penguin Random House page for The End. The paperback's description and details, handy for groups ordering copies through a library or bookshop.
• Our own reader's guide to The End has a character table, advice on the long sentences, ten fresh discussion questions and a spoiler-flagged section on the ending.

Reading around the novel

A few books that sit well next to The End, either because they share its ground or because they belong to the same moment in first fiction.

If you read only one, make it Christ in Concrete. It shows that the dense, almost liturgical prose of The End has an Italian American ancestor.

A note on The Volunteer

Scibona's second novel, The Volunteer, was published by Penguin Press in 2019. It begins with the abandoned boy from "The Kid" and then goes back to Vollie Frade, an Iowa farm boy who joins the Marines, fights in Vietnam and is drawn into covert work, before following four generations of fathers and sons. It is a larger book than The End in every direction, but readers of the first novel will recognize the subject of sons left behind. Three reviews worth reading:

• NPR: "'The Volunteer' Is a War Story Unlike Any Other". Jason Sheehan's enthusiastic March 2019 review, good on the book's argument that some sins pass from fathers to sons.
• The New York Review of Books: "The Work of Becoming No One". Joan Acocella's long essay-review, which lays out the generations and the broken-glass structure more clearly than any other piece.
• The Kenyon Review: "On Salvatore Scibona's The Volunteer". Linda Kass's review, which traces the novel's first chapter back to "The Kid" and sets the book against The End.

The Penguin Random House page for The Volunteer has the publisher's summary, and The New Yorker printed a second story drawn from the same material, "Do Not Stop", which follows Vollie as a young Marine.

For more books about first novels and the prizes that read them, see our first novels shelf, and for general reading and writing resources, our back matter page.