Gangster - Softcover

It will come as no surprise to anyone who understands the derivative nature of filmmaking that Lorenzo Carcaterra's newest has already been bought for a TV miniseries. After all, how many times can you rerun all three parts of The Godfather? Here the author of Sleepers and Apaches provides a full accounting of the life of one Angelo Vestiere, told from the perspective of two people who witnessed it firsthand: Gabe, the street kid who ultimately betrayed Angelo's hope that he would succeed him; and Mary, the woman who loved him. One knows a secret about the other, which isn't revealed until the book's final pages. But by that time the secret doesn't matter and sheds no more light on Angelo than the reader has gleaned in the previous chapters.

Angelo has few redeeming characteristics. As the protagonist of this sprawling novel of the rise of organized crime in America, he never earns the reader's empathy, despite Carcaterra's attempts to humanize his central character by presenting the "code of the gangster" as a believable rationale for Angelo's existence and his success in his chosen career. By far the more interesting thugs who people this book are Pudge, Angus McQueen, and Ida the Goose, a trio of fellow gangsters the author pulls into Angelo's orbit. Despite their moral and ethical shortcomings, they are picaresque enough to have a certain raffish charm. But Angelo is no Don Corleone or even Tony Soprano. And while Carcaterra's a journeyman writer, he's not ready to inherit the mantle of the late (and in this case sadly lamented) Mario Puzo. --Jane Adams

hrs.
performance by Joe Mantegna

The powerful prologue sets the tone. Gabe, the narrator of the novel, is visiting an old man—his uncle, Angelo—at the hospital. The uncle is dying a lonely and solitary death, abandoned by his family, deserted by everyone but Gabe. As Gabe keeps his sad vigil, a woman, Mary, enters the hospital room. He has never seen or heard of her before—but she knows an awful lot about him and even more about Angelo. She tells Gabe that there's much he should know. And as she begins to recount the real story of Angelo's past—and as Gabe, in his own first person voice, tells his own story as it intersects with Angelo's—Gabe learns not only his family history, he confronts important truths about who he is and what he's going to become.

Part One is the story of the making of a powerful New York mobster—Angelo Vestieri. In a shocking opening in Sicily, Angelo's father must make a decision about his eldest son. The fami