The Slow Midnight on Cypress Avenue, Mike Figliola
The Slow Midnight on Cypress Avenue, Mike Figliola
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

The Slow Midnight on Cypress Avenue

Author: Mike Figliola

Narrator: Peter Berkrot, Callie Beaulieu, Joana Garcia

Unabridged: 6 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/16/2021

Categories: Fiction, Urban, City Life


Synopsis

So, who are these irregular regulars of Cypress Avenue?

Set over the course of one Sunday, The Slow Midnight on Cypress Avenue is a collection of interconnected vignettes that takes the listener through the streets and across the sidewalks of Cypress Avenue—an unkempt afterthought, just a place that sits at the neighborhood border edge of Ridgewood Queens, New York.

The three-part book—broken into Morning, Afternoon, and Night—introduces you to the irregular regulars of the human race.

There is the soft and strange relationship between the eccentric Samuel Jean and a young girl of Puerto Rican descent named Desponda "Dezzy" Rivera. There's "Old" Goldie Samuels, a washed-up relic who spends her days spinning yarns and getting free drinks at the local liquor store. But the story is truly centered on Corporal Benjamin Zogby, a veteran who spends his days alone on his stoop watching the bus go by and wishing his love would return to him. It's his tragic fate that sends the avenue and the other inhabitants you'll meet—Earl the fisherman, Father John White, among others—into an unstoppable tailspin toward unexpected change and inner destruction.

About Mike Figliola

Mike Figliola is a writer, television/radio reporter, and producer who has called New York City-specifically Queens-his home for more than thirty years. He has written hundreds of poems and has read them on a regular basis at such venues as the famed Cornelia Street Cafe in NYC with actor John Ventimiglia and poet Frank Messina, and has been a featured poet in the Brooklyn Poet Laureate's "Brooklyn Poetry Outreach" in Park Slope Brooklyn. He has served as a producer, writer, and reporter in radio and TV on both local and national platforms.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jack on March 27, 2021

I have been looking forward to reviewing Mike Figliolas seminal work: The Slow Midnight on Cypress Avenue. Over the years I have been listening to his work at Ken Siegelman's Poetry Outreach in Park Slope, Brooklyn and have followed much of his work. Please standby for the review of the Slow Midnigh......more

Goodreads review by Rebecca on February 22, 2021

Reminiscent of Lanford Wilson’s play, The Hot l Baltimore, The Slow Midnight on Cypress Avenue centers around a gritty cast of characters in a well defined place. And not just any place, a corner of Queens. But Figliola’s story has more heart and more tenderness for his place and people. The down an......more

Goodreads review by Adam on October 11, 2023

The Slow Midnight on Cypress Avenue by Mike Figliola is a pleasant street-level gaze at Queens, New York, in the reminiscent connectedness of Raymond Carver’s Short Cuts & David Mitchell’s literary universe. There is a raw honesty to this three-part novel which kept me spellbound. Similar to Paul Th......more

Goodreads review by Alexander on October 09, 2021

Figliola's debut announces the arrival of a fantastic new voice in American literature. This guy is a major talent with a great ear for dialogue and a nose for authentic character, not to mention the ability to create a vibrant atmosphere. If you're looking for a great slice of urban life, look no f......more