The System by Ryan Gattis

Published by Farrar, Straus and Girou/MCD on December 8, 2020

The System is a fascinating novel about the criminal justice system as seen from the perspectives of multiple characters. It is one of the most perceptive takes on crime and criminal justice I’ve encountered in some time.

There are actually two systems at work in the novel. Running parallel to the government’s system of law and order is one that imposes a different sort of order. It determines how prisoners run prisons and how gangs run streets.

Key characters experience events that change them in ways that are beneficial or unsettling or both. Some of the characters have epiphanies that the reader hopes will guide the rest of their lives. Those characters give the novel its heart. To their misfortune, other characters fail to take advantage of opportunities to change. Those characters contribute to the novel’s sense of realism.

The story begins with Angela Alvarez breaking up with her boyfriend, Jacob Safulu, a/k/a Dreamer. Angela is beautiful and smart. She lives in a house she inherited from her aunt in a low-income neighborhood. She lives with Dreamer and her cousin, Omar Tavira, a/k/a Wizard. She works as a barista and takes nursing classes because she wants to make a better life for herself. Dreamer and Wizard are good friends but Dreamer isn’t part of Wizard’s gang life. Dreamer doesn’t know what he wants to be. Angela thinks he’s drifting in order to avoid responsibility. That’s not what she wants in a boyfriend.

As Angela is delivering the bad news to Dreamer, Wizard is shooting a woman named Scrappy. The hit has been ordered by Wizard’s gang leader to send a message about Scrappy’s failure to respect territorial boundaries. An addict named Augie Clark was trying to score from Scrappy shortly before the shooting. He sees it go down and saves her life after the shooter flees. He also steals all the heroin she’s hidden on her person and the gun that the shooter dropped at the scene.

Augie’s parole agent, Phillip Petrillo, finds the drugs and the gun during a search of Augie’s room. Petrillo is also Wizard’s parole agent. When Augie admits that he stole the gun after watching Wizard shoot Scrappy, Petrillo convinces him to say that Wizard’s accomplice, who Augie didn’t recognize, was Dreamer, who Augie doesn’t know.

Petrillo wants to set up Dreamer because he knows Dreamer is dating Angela and, having met Angela a few times during home visits with Wizard, he knows Angela is hot. To get Dreamer out of the way, Petrillo searches Angela’s house and plants the gun in the room where Dreamer sleeps. Petrillo has used his position to further inappropriate relationships with many other young women but he sees Angela as his biggest conquest.

The plot moves forward through the arrest and trial of Wizard and Dreamer. Chapters narrate the story from each of their perspectives as well as those of Angela, a defense lawyer, a prosecutor, and a couple of cops. I love the variety of distinct voices in which the story is told. Each voice is articulate in its own way, reminding the reader that intelligence and formal education are two different things.

Angela is a sympathetic character. Through Petrillo, she gets a taste of what opportunities the world outside her neighborhood might hold. When she realizes what a cad Petrillo is, she struggles with the fact that she felt attracted to him and begins to realize that the attraction was not to Petrillo but to what he might represent.

Dreamer also changes, moving in different directions as the novel unfolds. His adaptation to prison life might in some ways be unhealthy, despite the imperative to do what it takes to survive. At the same time, he begins to realize that his loyalty to Wizard hasn’t been repaid and that the code of the street isn’t as important as the ideas he encounters after diving into the prison library. The fact that Dreamer and Angela both take advantage of the opportunity to confront life in a more positive way suggests that all of us might be able to do the same.

The novel encourages the reader to empathize with the kind of people who are often condemned by society. It similarly encourages the reader to understand that people who perform jobs that purportedly benefit society are sometimes interested only in benefiting themselves. Ultimately, the novel reminds us that life is more complex than people with limited experience imagine it to be.

The plot might be faulted for delivering such a satisfying ending. Trial scenes are compelling but not always accurate in detailing how the judicial system works. Those are insignificant quibbles about a story that kept me spellbound.

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