An exasperatingly inept biography of the other Italian-American singer from Hoboken. Ten years younger than Frank Sinatra, Roselli, though enormously popular with the Italian-American community, has lived in that shadow of and—if this screed is credible—been kept from making it “big” by Sinatra and the mob. Novelist Evanier (Red Love, 1991) depends almost entirely on hearsay and the oral testimony of Roselli and some of his associates. He cites the occasional book for background, such as Richard Gambino’s Blood of My Blood, but relies heavily on newspaper accounts, concert reviews, and album liner notes. Roselli started singing in Hoboken saloons before the age of 10. Sinatra, whose family lived down the street, was “amazed at my two-octave range,” says Roselli. The two shared a stage just once, in 1937, at the dedication of a local park, when Sinatra was 22 and Roselli 12. Throughout the book, Evanier recounts slights and snubs; he reiterates Roselli’s claim that his refusal to sing at a charity benefit put on by Sinatra’s mother, Dolly, got his blackballed. There’s no documentation of this and what little corroboration he offers comes from the often inarticulate recollections of Roselli’s pals. While Evanier touts Roselli as one who defied the mob, he also outlines his career-long involvement with them (he sang at John Gotti Jr.’s wedding). Evanier recounts the singer’s hassles with everyone from Ed Sullivan to Merv Griffin to New York’s WNEW, the radio station that “yanked” his records at the behest of either Sinatra or the Gambino family. At the same time that he presents this as evidence as to why Roselli never “made it,” he writes of $100,000 concert fees and million-dollar mansions. It makes no sense. As unpleasant, mercurial, and contradictory as Roselli would appear, even he deserves better than this account of his career.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-19927-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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