A meandering, wonderfully colorful hop-skip-and-a-grunt tour of the Little Italy that tourists wish they could visit, told...
New York’s greatest newspaper columnist (Not Exactly What I Had in Mind, 1997, etc.) does another number on da Mob. (You got a problem with that?)
We want to thank Breslin’s brain for remembering that he’s still the funniest crime writer on the planet This sentimental, wildly comic return to form from the guy who blazed to glory so many years ago with The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1969), is pure pleasure, with a belly laugh on almost every page. We meet aging, lazy, but still vastly intimidating mob boss Fausti “The Fist” Dellacava, a former prizefighter so adverse to losing that his bookies stay up all night trying to dream up ways to turn The Fist’s unlucky wagers into winners. ("Either I count money on Saturday night or I get choked to death," thinks one bookie. "That's only fair.") The Fist is having an increasingly difficult time holding on to his Greenwich Village turf, as his smart but slightly naive nephew, also named Fausti, tries to figure out if he wants to go into the family business. Only Fausti the Younger is brave enough to risk The Fist’s wrath when he impulsively eats The Fist under the table in front of mob lieutenants Baldy Dom, Quiet Dom, and Dom Dom. But Fausti also has doubts about his uncle’s morals: The Fist has been living a double life, shuttling across Manhattan between two wives with three kids each while pretending nobody notices. When young Fausti gets a summer job as lifeguard on Rockaway Beach, he inadvertently sets off a vendetta when he fails to save the life of a minor Gotti gang member. Playing the sidelines, with all bets covered, is the ambitious, media-savvy Father Phil Napolitano, a distant relative of the Dellacavas who preaches that “there never was a stand-up man like” Jesus, and Judas Iscariot “should have died in his mother’s womb,” but “we must give some people the benefit of the doubt. We shouldn’t be too quick to whack some guy.”
A meandering, wonderfully colorful hop-skip-and-a-grunt tour of the Little Italy that tourists wish they could visit, told in Breslin’s distinctively snappy, side-of-the-mouth style.Pub Date: May 23, 2001
ISBN: 0-316-11845-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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