Gangster - Softcover

Carcaterra, Lorenzo

4.17

3,288 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743416023 ISBN 13: 9780743416023

Publisher: Pocket Books, 2002

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Ever since his best-selling SLEEPERS, Lorenzo Carcaterra has told tales of Italian-Americans. Now, in this huge story, he travels from the days of godfathers and goodfellas to our own world of suburban Sopranos. GANGSTER is an epic, compassionate portrait of one man's fight against his fate - and the narrative of a family, a city and a century. Born in violence and raised in the shadow of a shocking secret, young Angelo Vestieri chose to flee both his Italian past and his father, and build a new life in early 20th century New York. Through his bloody rise from soldier to mob boss he deals in further betrayals - in his brutal business, in friendship and in love - while coming to understand loyalty and the virtues of relationships. As he grows older, Angelo takes Gabe, an abandoned boy, under his wing, and teaches him everything he knows. Finally, he will learn which is stronger - the love he has for the boy he cherishes, or the need to be a gangster and live by the savage rules he helped to create.

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Review:

It will come as no surprise to anyone who understands the derivative nature of filmmaking that Lorenzo Carcaterra's Gangster has been bought for a TV mini series. After all, how many times can you rerun all three parts of The Godfather? Here the author of Sleepers and Apaches provides a full accounting of the life of one Angelo Vestiere, told from the perspective of two people who witnessed it first hand: Gabe, the street kid who ultimately betrayed Angelo's hope that he would succeed him; and Mary, the woman who loved him. One knows a secret about the other, which isn't revealed until the book's final pages. But by that time the secret doesn't matter and sheds no more light on Angelo than the reader has gleaned in the previous chapters.

Angelo has few redeeming characteristics. As the protagonist of this sprawling novel of the rise of organised crime in America, he never earns the reader's empathy, despite Carcaterra's attempts to humanise his central character by presenting the "code of the gangster" as a believable rationale for Angelo's existence and his success in his chosen career. By far the more interesting thugs who people this book are Pudge, Angus McQueen and Ida the Goose, a trio of fellow gangsters the author pulls into Angelo's orbit. Despite their moral and ethical shortcomings, they are picaresque enough to have a certain raffish charm. But Angelo is no Don Corleone or even Tony Soprano. And while Carcaterra's a journeyman writer, he's not ready to inherit the mantle of the late (and in this case sadly lamented) Mario Puzo. --Jane Adams, Amazon.com

Review:

Carcaterra's unrelenting pace gives this sweeping saga a style all of its own -- Maxim

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