Sergio De La Pava

Casi is a hotshot public defender working on the front line of America's War on Drugs. So far he's on the winning side. He's never lost a case. But nothing lasts forever, and pride like his has a long way to fall. Funny, smart and always surprising, A Naked Singularity speaks a language all of its own and reads like nothing else ever written. Casi's beautiful mind and planetary intelligence make him an inimitable and unforgettable narrator. In De La Pava's hands, the labyrinthine miseries of the New York Justice System are as layered and diabolical as Dante's nine circles of Hell. But the Devil doesn't hog the best lines. There are plenty here to go around.

A Naked Singularity

Manhattan public defender Casi has a perfect record of courtroom victories, but he experiences a personal and professional devolution as his sense of justice begins to crack.

A Novel

Kyle Curry

Oh my, what to say about this magnificent journey to places I never knew I wanted to go. Looking back it's a bit unfathomable to think of all the places De La Pava takes one during this narrative considering where it started. In a broadest stroke this feels a bit like the Catch-22 of the US justice system (so if you're looking for something post Making a Murder...), at times hilarious in it's absurdity, only to let you realize the absurd things are true, making you want to cry. But, otherwise it would be a bit reductive to pin it into that category.

For one of the wordiest novels I've read, where characters explode into extensive tangents and talk to each other in circular complex arguments, I would be hard pressed to find a wasted word. This novel jumps both in time (the tiniest bit) and form, yet I hardly registered the at times out of order events. I was never playing catch up, or considering skipping a chapter to read ahead. 

Bottom line, I can not recommend this novel enough. The characters come alive, the seemingly odd events whirl together with growing intensity, the prose is rapturous to read, and you will walk away feeling like you've made a livelong friend in the young narrator of the story (the irony of which will probably blow open your brain, I'm still picking mine up.).

A Naked Singularity

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