A mob story with the prerequisite hits, casinos and Italian food, but augmented by a strong sense of camaraderie.
Carraturo’s novel tells the decades-long story of the mob-related Scalamarri family living through good and hard times.
In 1947, mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was killed at his home. The identity of his assassin most likely resides somewhere in the lineage of the Scalamarri family, who lost 12 of its members in a fire—what came to be known as the Sunday Night Massacre. Vincent, the surviving son who witnessed the murders, tells his story years later to his grandson, Tony, and friends, Sal and Chris, all descendants of the Scalamarris. Tony and Sal agree to sever all association they have with gangsters, and Chris, a successful financial advisor, works out a deal with a friend at the FBI, allowing the other men to act as informants. The plan goes awry when wise guys start getting whacked. The author’s novel is a prequel of sorts to his previous book (Cameron Nation, 2011), which featured Chris as the protagonist. The title of his latest is a little misleading: It’s a reference to the three friends, but the plot jumps around the family tree, whose branches are depicted throughout the novel with a helpful visual, especially considering the vast number of characters in the book. In fact, the back story—Vincent’s involvement in World War II, his quest for retribution and his falling in love—is tighter and more interesting. The author aptly manages frequent leaps, sometimes with dark humor. As the two timelines converge, the novel picks up pace with stellar results: a Fed goes undercover and a seemingly insignificant character returns to chuck a wrench into the FBI’s scheme. Blending plot with real-world events and people—Watergate, George Raft and Frank Sinatra—adds a dash of authenticity to the epic.
A mob story with the prerequisite hits, casinos and Italian food, but augmented by a strong sense of camaraderie.Pub Date: April 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-1469778280
Page Count: 267
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engaging story is marred by an overblown narrative style.
Three characters separated by geography and time are united by a single raindrop.
In her latest novel, Shafak presents readers with an ambitious, century-spanning saga that revolves around three distinct characters hailing from different parts of the world and different time periods. There’s Zaleekhah, a hydrologist who has fled her marriage to live in a houseboat on the Thames in 2018; Narin, a young girl who lives along the Tigris in Turkey in 2014, where she is gradually going deaf; and Arthur, a brilliant young boy born into extreme poverty in mid-19th-century London. Zaleekhah, Narin, and Arthur are united by a literary device that often feels overly precious: a single raindrop that, through a repeated cycle of condensation, falling, freezing, and/or thawing, reappears throughout time to interact with or afflict each character. Shafak’s attempts to personify the raindrop, which is described as “small and terrified…not dar[ing] to move,” fall flat. As a whole, the novel is engaging, with a propulsive narrative and an appealing storytelling voice, but Shafak is overly reliant on certain stylistic mannerisms, such as long lists of descriptions or actions that, stacked one upon the other, quickly grow tiresome, as in this description of Victorian England: “Spent grain from breweries, pulp from paper mills, offal from slaughterhouses, shavings from tanneries, effluent from distilleries…and discharge from flush toilets…all empty into the Thames….” Worse is Shafak’s tendency to overwrite and to pursue a self-consciously baroque narrative style (lots of betwixts and whilsts), which occasionally results in convoluted or overly intricate phrases. “Did not our readings of poetry leave unforgettable memories?” one character asks early on. Less, as it turns out, sometimes does count for more.
An engaging story is marred by an overblown narrative style.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593801710
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
North widens her range with this layered mystery-meets-ancient-history mashup.
An American anthropologist in northern England becomes entangled in emotional and literal quagmires after identifying an ancient body in a bog.
Agnes has a way with people—but only if they’re dead. A gifted student, she graduated from high school early and powered through university and doctoral studies to become a forensic anthropologist. Feeling oppressed by her doting father’s omnipresence and a too-comfortable boyfriend, Agnes decides to take a postdoc position in Manchester. She is called in to assist with the identification of what authorities believe is a murder victim killed by her husband in 1961 and buried in a peat bog, but Agnes immediately sees, and soon confirms, that this is a body older than any she (or, for that matter, almost anyone) has ever unearthed. In the novel’s first narrative track, Agnes attempts to conduct an excavation at the bog, caught in a web of conflicting interests that includes the peat company, the press, the niece of the still-undiscovered murder victim, a bioarchaeologist and her precocious teen daughter, and a group of environmental activists intent on rewilding the peat. The book’s second narrative belongs to “the druid of Bereda,” a Celtic priest from ancient Europe who navigates her diplomatic and spiritual duties during the fraught beginnings of the Roman Empire’s expansion. (The moss narrates briefly, too.) North’s previous novel, Outlawed (2021), turned the Western genre on its head, and here she tackles historical fiction, swinging for the fences by taking on an ancient culture (and one that largely lacks written records). Perhaps it’s inevitable that the character of Agnes cannot help but be less magnetic than the regal druid. Nevertheless, this is a memorable tale of the unexpected linkages of history, land, and female power.
North widens her range with this layered mystery-meets-ancient-history mashup.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781635579666
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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