A Tomb on the Periphery
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A Tomb on the Periphery
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4.83 of 5 stars
A Tomb on the Periphery echoes the troubled Naples of Domini's highly-praised novel Eathquake I.D., but with an entirely new tale. Part crime story... read full description

reviews

Feb 18, 2009
Jason rated it: 5 of 5 stars
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

(By the way, I recently got a chance to interview Domini, for an episode of the CCLaP Podcast that will be airing next week. I hope you'll get a chance to stop by the website for that as well.)

As regular readers know, I don't believe in such a thing as "mainstream literar More...
1 comment like (3 people liked it)
Oct 04, 2011
John rated it: 4 of 5 stars
. Tomb on the Periphery
by John Domini
We are surrounded by inpenetrable mysteries.These mysteries are beyond the region of sense.
Jean-Jacuques -Rousseau

A brilliant dark crime-noir novel.
Anytime the opening narrative is about gazing at a moonlit exposed skeleton circa. 600 B.C.,[about two hundred years before the Greeks built the Parthenon in Athens ] at Paestrum, an ancient centuries-old More...
0 comments like (1 person liked it)
May 05, 2010
Ginnetta rated it: 5 of 5 stars
Having never read any of John Domini’s writing or Earthquake ID. Was introduced to the Tomb on the Periphery from a sort of a stranger perspective. I did not help my situation but to expect a certain formula of how a book such as this would or should read. However, to my surprise the appeal began with the orchestration of scenes read over again to understand the next thought or image I believed would be easily understood or figured out. Any author who can mess with structure of the what is ex More...
1 comment like (1 person liked it)
Aug 12, 2011
Stephen rated it: 5 of 5 stars
A young Italian counterfeiter. An American woman of dubious morals. A Somali family touched by the death of their youngest daughter and their very blackness. Thugs who frequently employ cudgel and knife to enforce their will. Scorching sex. Existential dread. Crimes both petty and felonious.

Sounds like a novel Dennis Lehane or Elmore Leonard might take on. But no. A Tomb on the Periphery is by a peripatetic fellow named John Domini, a belles lettristic kind of guy, sadly unac More...
0 comments like
Jun 22, 2011
Sue rated it: 5 of 5 stars
Domini's writing style is not always easy. There's a lot of thinking, a little action, some conversation. It's the thinking part where the story is revealed. Most of the clues are in the back and forth conversation the main character has with himself. The pace is slow and because not a lot of action is happening, you tend to get lulled and then Bam! something happens. Something violent and weird and completely different from what went before. If you read quickly or without feeling you'll often m More...
0 comments like (1 person liked it)
Mar 09, 2011
J rated it: 5 of 5 stars
A Masterful Crime Novel. If Raymond Chandler and Italo Calvino got together and decided to work on something, it might look a little like this. An unusually talented Journeyman Jewelery-Smith plans the perfect crime with the aid of a sexy Con Artist while trying to stay one step ahead of the Gangs and the Cops. As the Story unfolds, he can't help but become immersed in what is going on around him in an Earthquake ravaged Naples which Domini paints with a fine tip Brush, carefully examining and a More...
0 comments like (1 person liked it)
Sep 11, 2008
Phil rated it: 5 of 5 stars
great fun
0 comments like (1 person liked it)
Apr 15, 2010
Gabriel rated it: 5 of 5 stars
One could do much worse than read (yes, the whole thing) Aaron Plasek's rumination on criticism as it applies to this book in particular in February's issue of The Collagist.

Plasek writes about the quick shifts Domini's narrator makes: past to present, back again, but even when only speaking about one or the other, Domini's narrator is constantly shifting from one thing to another, a roving eye with an always-plotting brain connected, directing. Because the narrator is concerned with More...
3 comments like (4 people liked it)
Jan 20, 2009
Dewitt rated it: 5 of 5 stars

A self-contained sequel to Domini’s virtuoso Earthquake ID (which focused on an American family encountering Naples as part of a NATO relief effort), this new novel focuses on the redemption of a young Neopolitan jeweler, Fabbrizio, who is involved with underground figures who steal relics from archeological digs and sell them to museums; and/or who sell counterfeit relics (which he crafts) to museums. The villains of the story are two local hoods, quick with knives. The intrigue and rom More...
0 comments like
Dec 24, 2008
Lettie rated it: 5 of 5 stars
I shouldn't compare John Domini's "A Tomb on the Periphery" to a novel of almost a whole decade earlier -- Marcos Villatoro's "The Holy Spirit of My Uncle's Cojones (Arte Publico Press, 1999). TOMB is Italian; COJONES is Latino. The young man of TOMB is older, edgier, darker. And Villatoro's COJONES is not in everyone's minds; it's too esoteric to reference, just another small press novel.

Yet neither Domini's nor Villatoro's small press works should be ignored. And wh More...
0 comments like
May 17, 2008
4am rated it: 5 of 5 stars
John Domini's A Tomb on the Periphery is the second of a three-novel series set in post-earthquake Naples, Italy. The main character Fabbrizio, or Brizio for short, takes us on a wild ride through the grittier side of an already chaotic disaster area created Domini's first book in the series, Earthquake I.D. Though it is part of a series, A Tomb on the Periphery can be thoroughly enjoyed on its own.

As a result of the catastrophic earthquake, new archaeological ruins have been uncover More...
0 comments like (1 person liked it)
Feb 09, 2011
David rated it: 5 of 5 stars
This is a marvelously rich story. Rich in complex threads woven into a single unified storyline, rich in developed individualistic characters, rich in setting so detailed it feels like you can touch it, and more. Domini writes just an interesting novel as he does a short story.
5 comments like (2 people liked it)
Feb 20, 2011
M rated it: 5 of 5 stars
John Domini's novel A Tomb on the Periphery is the second novel of his trilogy on Naples.
The author's erudition focuses on napolitan culture and society with a lot of geographic and archeological details.
This tale, part ghost story, part crime in Naples underworld describes difficult situations & struggles lived by Fabbrizio, the main character, sometimes funny, often darkly with a lot of suspense.
I'm looking forward to read the third novel of his trilogy. More...
3 comments like (2 people liked it)
Apr 15, 2010
Tuck rated it: 4 of 5 stars
once this book is in your head, you can't get it out. erudite and exciting and a GREAT sex scene. more to come
6 comments like (1 person liked it)
Feb 11, 2012
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