I’ve just now finished this book and want to write this before the experience subsides.  One reviewer of As God Commands, the award-winning novel by Italian author Niccolo Ammaniti, said “If the Coen brothers ever wanted to go Italian, this’d be prime adaptation material.”  Indeed.  This is a brutal, sometimes darkly humorous novel of three men and one man’s son from the underside of society, bleeding anger and scheming on ways to make something of their lives.  Ammaniti, also the author of the brilliant suspense novel I’m Not Scared, describes characters, places and circumstances with a sense of foreboding and reality that cannot be denied.  I stopped halfway through, horrified by an event in the story, and decided to return it unread the following morning.  But at the library I picked it up just to read to the end of that page and wound up ignoring my responsibilities and reading the whole damned book in one long sitting.  For better or for worse, this is what a great book can do.