Gangster [Hardcover]

Lorenzo Carcaterra (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 30, 2001

Love. Violence. Destiny. These powerful themes ricochet through Lorenzo Carcaterra's new novel like bullets from a machine gun. In Gangster, he surpasses even his bestselling Sleepers to create a brutal and brilliant American saga of murder, forgiveness, and redemption.

Born in the midst of tragedy and violence and raised in the shadow of a shocking secret, young Angelo Vestieri chooses to flee both his past and his father to seek a second family--the criminals who preside over early 20th century New York. In his bloody rise from soldier to mob boss, he encounters ever more barbaric betrayals--in friendship, in his brutal business, in love-- yet simultaneously comes to understand the meaning of loyalty, the virtue of relationships, and gains a perspective on the lonely, if powerful, life he has chosen.

As the years pass, as enemies are made and defeated, as wars are fought and won, the old don meets an abandoned boy who needs a parent as much as protection. By taking Gabe under his wing and teaching him everything he knows, Angelo Vestieri will learn, in the winter of his life, which is greater: his love for the boy he cherishes, or his need to be a gangster and to live by the savage rules he helped create.

A sweeping panoramic with riveting characters, a unique understanding of the underworld philosophy, and a relentless pace, Gangster travels through the time of godfathers and goodfellas to our own world of suburban Sopranos. But this is more than just an authentic chronicle of crime. Setting a new standard for this acclaimed author, Gangster is a compassionate portrait of one man's fight against his fate--and an unforgettable epic of a family, a city, a century.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

From Publishers Weekly

"I was now well-prepared to be a career criminal... I just didn't have the stomach for any of it." Carcaterra's latest crime novel is the tantalizing coming-of-age story of orphan Gabe, groomed by longtime New York City mob boss Angelo Vestieri to be his successor. The novel opens in the 1990s as Gabe, now middle-aged, keeps watch over Vestieri on his hospital deathbed. Slipping back in time to the Depression, the narrative tracks the rise of the famed mob boss from Italian immigrant to lord of Manhattan's underworld, when Gabe, 10, walks into Vestieri's bar after running out on his latest foster parents in 1964. Vestieri takes the impressionable boy under his wing and ushers him into the world of organized crime. Gabe runs numbers, collects debts and learns loyalty and the price of betrayal. Yet when the time comes for Gabe to take over the operation, he refuses, choosing a normal life despite his deep love for Vestieri. As he did in Sleepers and Apaches, Carcaterra shows dexterity in humanizing the denizens of the urban underbelly. Through a fine characterization of the enigmatic Vestieri, he provides a stirring perspective on the ways of mobsters and their history. Yet the book's central theme, the complex choice facing Gabe, is poorly developed, rarely penetrating the surface of his rejection of gang life. Carcaterra's portrayal focuses primarily on violence as the source of Gabe's revulsion, only touching on Gabe's understanding of how mobstersAthrough fear and corruptionAinfluence society in much deeper ways. (Feb. 1) Forecast: From its bold title and catchy cover to the publisher's plans for major ad/promo, including a six-city author tour, this novel promises to perform. Its major push, though, will come down the road, from a four-hour ABC miniseries already in the works.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (January 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 034540100X
• ISBN-13: 978-0345401007
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #501,954 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A 'family' saga that goes deeper, February 5, 2001

By 

Ron Franscell, Author of 'Sourtoe Cocktail Club' - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gangster (Hardcover)

Gangland -- or at least its literary environs -- hasn't been the same since the late Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" pumped a little ba-da-bing into the phrase "family saga."

Lorenzo Carcaterra`s "Gangster" is a rich tale about the rise of an Italian mobster, from his roots in turn-of-the-century Italy to the mean streets of New York City. By hook or crook -- mostly crook -- he rises to the highest echelons of the underworld and, having survived the bullets and mayhem, is dying rather ignominiously as an old man. And his likeliest successor is uncertain he wants to claim his iniquitous inheritance. Sound familiar?

Well, fuhgeddaboudit. There's one word even the most astute reader will not find in "Gangster": Godfather.

Puzo admitted he never met an "honest-to-God real-life gangster," but Carcaterra ate, drank and lived with them most of his life. The author of "Sleepers" and "Apaches" knows these wiseguys intimately, and he understands the public`s long-standing fascination with the Mafia. These characters are not denizens of his vivid and proven imagination; they were his friends and neighbors in Hell's Kitchen, the tough New York neighborhood where he grew up. The son of a convicted murderer didn't hang out with the kids of doctors and lawyers. The goodfellas of Carcaterra's youth weren't today's Russian mobsters and urban street gangs; the best of the Old World gangsters embraced friendship, loyalty and revenge as equally noble. And those very "qualities" have played a role in each of Carcaterra's books.

His familiarity with the underworld, however peripheral, shines through in "Gangster." Yes, comparisons between Angelo Vestieri and Vito Corleone are inevitable, but they are different in significant ways, too.

"Gangster" is not "The Godfather." Both are eloquent works on the mob oeuvre. "Gangster" is more panoramic, an epic that embraces not only a handful of flawed men and women on the margins of society, but their time and place, too. "Gangster" is a story of fathers and sons, not just godfathers and guns. It is a complex morality play in which the reader occasionally roots for the villains and frowns upon the good guys. Carcaterra knows the underworld's rhythms and philosophy as well as he knows its dirty streets, rain-slicked piers and smoke-filled social clubs.

Gangland is Carcaterra's country.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful stuff!!!, August 20, 2002

By 

Beverley Strong (Australia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gangster (Mass Market Paperback)

There are certain mild mannered individuals like me, who adore gangster and mafia stuff.I'd thoroughly recommend this book to afficionados or people who enjoyed "Godfather".
Gabe is a young boy who has been raised by foster parents,mostly by people who are only in it for the money-the government allowances made to couples who are willing to house,feed and send to school,orphaned children.He's a lonely little boy who meets Angelo Vestieri,a local gangster in a New York district.Angelo befriends Gabe and introduces him to his friend and off-sider,Pudge. The two gangsters virtually adopt the boy and give him a secure home in a loving environment,for the first time in his life although, at the same time, they are instilling in him the things he needs to know to follow the way of life of gangsters.This story follows Gabes life through to adulthood when he begins to question the way of life mapped out for him by his mentors.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Carcaterra Hits a Homer!, June 23, 2001

By 

"auger77777" (Eau Claire, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gangster (Hardcover)

I just finished GANGSTER, and it was definitely a cannot-put-down book. I have read all of Carcaterra's books and found them well-written and riveting (particularly SLEEPERS). But I must confess, when I started GANGSTER, having read other reviews, I was expecting a so-so rehash of Puzo's GODFATHER. I was pleasantly surprised to find a book that was not only original, but one that was both entertaining and spine-chilling. I will admit that the ending was fairly predictable (in my opinion), but this did not detract from the book itself. The main character, Angelo Vestieri, was a gangster who was the ultimate in unpredictability. This left the ending open to any number of possibilities. It is obvious that Lorenzo Carcaterra knows the streets of Hell's Kitchen, as well as the people who rule there. It takes a writer of his caliber to create a story of this nature, in which the reader feels such a closeness to the "bad guys" as to engender feelings of loss when one of them is eliminated. I look forward to Carcaterra's next work. He just keeps getting better.