As God Commands by Niccolò Ammaniti, Translated from the Italian by Jonathan Hunt. Grove Atlantic/Black Cat, 400 pp, $14. 95.

Review by Tommy Wallach

In 2001, Niccoló Ammaniti’s novel Io non ho paura (“I’m Not Scared”) was published to great acclaim in Italy. The novel takes place in Tuscany during the so-called “Years of Lead, ” when both right and left-wing paramilitary groups carried out numerous acts of terrorism across the country. In 1978 alone, more than 600 kidnappings took place in Italy, mostly of Northerners transported and held for ransom in the South. “I’m Not Scared” tells the story of Michele, a nine year-old boy who, while out playing with his friends one afternoon, happens upon one of these kidnapped children in a giant hole dug near an abandoned farmhouse. It isn’t long before Michele realizes that nearly all of the adults in his small town, including his own parents, are in on the crime.

The cinematic adaptation of “I’m Not Scared” was one of my favorite films of 2004, and when I went back to read the novel, it proved equally compelling. Many books take on the disillusioning moment when a young boy first sees his father’s flaws, but Michele’s coming-of-age was particularly poignant. His parents had committed an unforgivable crime, and Michele’s struggle to reconcile his love for them with that fact lent the novel both an exterior and an interior drama.

Michele’s eventual attempt to save the kidnapped boy became at once an act of selfless bravery and of traditional rebellion, and the kidnapping was recast as yet another manifestation of the inscrutability of the actions of adults when one is young. In this way, Ammaniti seemed to me less like another Mario Puzo than an Italian David Mamet, creating a realistic criminal universe without any of the grandstanding or glorifying that gave us Michael Corleone and Tony Soprano.

His new novel, “As God Commands”, revisits much of the territory covered in “I’m Not Scared”. Again, there is a crime at the heart of the book, as well as a young protagonist. Christiano Zena is thirteen, the son of a neo-Nazi skinhead named Rino. The complexity of the father-son relationship emerges slowly and gracefully. In the first scene, Rino, in a drunken rage, wakes his son in the middle of the night and orders him to kill a neighbor’s dog with a handgun. But only a few chapters later, father and son are cleaning the house and baking together in order to convince their social worker of the healthiness of their domestic situation. The lengths to which Christiano eventually goes to protect his father leave no doubt in the reader’s mind that a strong bond of love exists between them.

In addition to Christiano and Rino, “As God Commands” features a sizable ensemble. There’s Beppe Trecca, the social worker mentioned above, who embarks on an affair with his best friend’s wife, Ida. Then there’s Danilo Aprea, whose plan to rob an ATM sets the tragedy of the novel in motion. Most disturbing of all is Quatro Formaggi (meaning “four cheese,” as in pizza, in Italian), the victim of an accidental electrocution that left him physically disabled and mentally deranged, who spends his days building a model village out of action figures and toys from fast food restaurant kids’ meals.

The action of the novel takes place over the course of six days, divided into three sections: Before, The Night, and After. While the middle section is ostensibly dedicated to the night of the heist, it quickly becomes something far more terrible. Just like Michele’s family in “I’m Not Scared,” the characters here are already well on their way to perdition by the time the novel starts, and their punishments come with a Biblical swiftness. While a subplot lifted almost whole cloth from Graham Greene’s “The End of the Affair” unfolds somewhat mechanically, the overall narrative carries the same tragic weight as that author’s best works.

In addition to the expanded cast, “As God Commands” differs from Amminiti’s earlier novel in that it is set in the present day. Though this robs the book of any historical resonance, it gives Ammaniti the opportunity to pepper his prose with pop culture references. Considering the tribulations of his young life, Christiano finds comfort in “the notion that great men have always had to struggle through shit on their own. Just think of Eminem or Hitler or Christian Vieri.” During the funeral of a girl who is raped and murdered sometime during the fateful evening at the center of the book, her schoolfriends can’t help but take photos and video on their phones: “In the dim light of the church the screens of the cell phones lit up like funeral candles.” Far from distracting, Ammaniti’s nods towards youth culture always ring true, deepenning the reality of his world.

Best-selling author Niccoló Ammaniti: Italy's Answer to David Mamet

“As God Commands” falters only when the plot threatens to overwhelm the subtle development of the characters. In the course of one evening, we get rape, murder, a coma-inducing aneurysm, a billboard somehow cutting a trailer in half as if it were a tin can (and exposing two adulterous lovers into the bargain), a hit and run, and a possibly miraculous recovery from said hit and run. While many novels revolve around a single fraught evening (“The Ice Storm”, “Atonement”, and “Mystic River” come to mind), it’s still a lot to take in at once. If novels had volume knobs, these would be turned up to eleven.

Still, “As God Commands” is far more stimulating than your average page-turner. Once again, Ammaniti has succeeded in telling a captivating story while developing convincing characters and relationships. Though this novel may lack the sharpness of “I’m Not Scared,” it makes up for it in scope. If the older book can be read as Ammaniti’s “American Buffalo,” this one is his “Glengarry Glen Ross.” Would it be crass of me to say I can’t wait for the movie to come out?