Remember, in The Godfather, when Michael Corleone had to hide out in Sicily for a while before coming home to start taking over the Corleone empire? Well, Puzo goes back to that point here, to 1950, with Michael about to leave for America. First, however, on orders from his father, Michael must do his best to arrange for the safe escape to the US of Salvatore Giuliano, the real-life Robin Hood of Sicily. And, while Michael meets the fugitive Giuliano's family and friends, trying to win their trust, flashbacks—the bulk of the novel—fill in the history-based tale of the bandit's career, his run-ins with both the authorities and the local Mafia kingpin, Don Croce. The saga begins in 1943, when nice young "Turi"—shot by corrupt earabinieri for smuggling a piece of black-market cheese—kills in anger, instantly becoming a hunted man. With chum Aspanu Pisciotta, he takes to the hills, vowing to "strike for the cause of justice, to help the poor"—attracting a motley band of allies (a professor as well as a few cutthroats), freeing harmless prisoners from jail, stealing a noblewoman's jewelry, etc. And Turi's fearless doings attract the attention of postwar power-broker Don Croce, who's in need of a "warrior chieftain" to supplement his non-violent spread of Mafia control. But Turi, who yearns "to slay the dragon of the Mafia in Sicily," shrugs off Don Croce's offers of alliance; he even kidnaps a Prince who's under the Don's protection; the Don responds with assassination attempts—all foiled. (One super-assassin switches allegiances, becoming a trusted Turi lieutenant.) Eventually, however, with promises of a governmental pardon from the Mafia-linked Christian Democrats, Turi does agree to an anti-Communist alliance with Don Croce. . . only to be doubly betrayed. (Most painfully, Don Croce arranges for Turi to take the blame for a massacre of peasants.) So now, back in 1950, Turi is fed up, eager to leave for the US and publish his "Testament"—with proof of Mafia/government ties. But, before Michael Corleone can assist his escape, Turi is finally killed by Don Croce-thanks to the betrayal of his secretly envious right-hand man. (And, back in America, Michael will learn a lesson in cynicism—when his father decides to keep the Testament under wraps.) Godfather fans may be disappointed that this isn't a sequel, that Michael's role is so peripheral. And the character of noble, vengeful Turi is more cardboard than the chiaroscuro of Puzo at his best. (Cf. Jay Robert Nash's The Mafia Diaries, p. 881, for another interpretation of the bandit—and his Testament.) But, if relatively thin and tame, this episodic morality-play is still vigorous storytelling in the dark, bitter Puzo manner—with twisting loyalties, impassive vendettas, and corruption at every level, from the town barber to the Cardinal of Palermo.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1984
ISBN: 0345441702
Page Count: 411
Publisher: Linden/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1984
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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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