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GANGSTER by Lorenzo Carcaterra - SIGNED BOOK - ADVANCE READING COPY
See all titles by Lorenzo Carcaterra.
In his succinctly titled second novel, Gangster, Lorenzo Carcaterra
turns his hand to an archetypal story: the evolution of a powerful
American crime lord. An episodic narrative that ranges from
turn-of-the-century Salerno to contemporary New York,
Gangster
recounts the life and times of Angelo Vestieri, a poor Italian
immigrant who achieves a distorted version of the American Dream.
The novel begins in 1996. Angelo, who is 90 years old and has
outlived his enemies and friends alike, is dying by degrees in a
Manhattan hospital. At his bedside are Gabe, an orphan and de facto
member of the Vestieri family, and Mary, an enigmatic older woman who
was once Angelo's lover. Their combined reminiscences form the
substance of the narrative, which recapitulates, in fragmented fashion,
the high points of Angelo's career.
A key element of the story takes place in 1906, when Angelo's
father, an impoverished shepherd named Paolino Vestieri, murders Carlo,
his eight-year-old son, rather than allow the boy to fall under the
influence of a local Mafia chieftain. Paolino then flees to America
with his pregnant wife, who dies giving birth to Angelo during a stormy
Atlantic crossing. Father and son eventually settle in the slums of New
York and begin to pursue their vastly different destinies.
The law-abiding Paolino takes on a series of menial jobs, while Angelo
encounters the three individuals who will shape, and warp, his life: a
streetwise Irish delinquent named Pudge Nichols; a hard-edged, maternal
tavern owner known as Ida the Goose; and Angus McQueen, a leading
figure in the Manhattan underworld. Angus gives Angelo his first real
"job" and his first taste of the highflying gangster lifestyle. From
that point forward, the novel takes us through Angelo's rise from
small-time hoodlum to embattled ruler of a lucrative, illicit empire.
His volatile career encompasses gang warfare, murder, and personal
betrayal, and reflects several decades of radical social change. It
also costs him almost everything he values and isolates him permanently
from the "civilian" world of family, friendship, and everyday human
concerns.
Gangster is not an especially literary book. The prose is
serviceable but not eloquent, the dialogue often stilted, and the basic
material a shade too familiar. It is, however, an intensely cinematic
novel that moves swiftly and cleanly through an extended series of
vivid set pieces, most of which should play very effectively in the
four-hour miniseries currently in development.
Gangster may lack the mythical resonance of The Godfather, but it's an energetic, headlong narrative that offers some violent, visceral pleasures of its own.
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