Safe Place [Paperback]

Lorenzo Carcaterra (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 4, 1997

An account of how the author and his mother survived the erratic, violent outbursts of his father, a powerful man who tempered his rage with affection. To a young boy he was a man to both love and fear - until Carcaterra learned something which changed his life for ever: his father was a murderer.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Read this book for a touching, brutal, hilarious book about growing up in Hell's Kitchen in the 50's. I didn't get a chance to meet the author until years after we had published this book. The occassion of our meeting was a dinner in New York to discuss his new book, SLEEPERS. I had read SLEEPERS the night before, was totally blown away by it and predicted at dinner that night that SLEEPERS would go on to be a New York Times hardcover bestseller .. which it did!! It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. If you've already read SLEEPERS, read A SAFE PLACE to learn more about the man. If you haven't read SLEEPERS, read this one anyway...a fine book by a special guy.
Mark Bloomfield, Ballantine Sales
--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

"Dramatic, graphic and wrenching...The reader is left to wonder--at the devastation of Carcaterra's youth, at his survival to adulthood, and at the grace that allowed him to craft this piercing memoir."
THE WASHINGTON POST
Lorenza Carcaterra grew up in Hell's Kitchen, New York in the 1950s and '60s in a confusing world of love and fear of his paradoxically violent and affectionate father. Then Lorenzo learned that his father had murdered his first wife. And he wondered how he could love his father again. Did he possess the same murderous fury; would he someday suddenly lash out at those he loved? As his father's physical abuse escalated, Lorenzo sought frantically for a safe place...a place where he could find hope and reconciliation and peace, where his father's terrible shadow no longer lingered. Now, decades later, Lorenzo has finally come to terms with the awful truth about his father. A SAFE PLACE is the brilliant result. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Trafalgar Square (December 4, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099257076
• ISBN-13: 978-0099257073
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,377,014 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Startling Bad, January 5, 2002

By 

"omalleygator" (Norman, OK United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Safe Place : The True Story of a Father,a Son,a Murder (Mass Market Paperback)

I read and enjoyed Carcaterra's Sleepers and followed it up with a reading of this book. I found the contrast between the two books startling.
Carcaterra has chosen to write from a first person point of view, which is certainly appropriate in a memoir. But he doesn't follow through with the conventions and limitations of this POV. He constantly gives information that he, as the narrator and a character within the story itself, could not possibly have witnessed. If he learned these facts and anecdotes by being told by someone else (as he must have), he needs to acknowledge that with "as she told me" or some similar explanation. I was repeatedly pulled out of the story by thinking, "<snort> Now HOW could he know that?"
Further, I was deeply disturbed by the loving detail lavished on descriptions of every beating Carcaterra's mother ever took from his father. I don't need repetitious blow-by-blow descriptions to understand that the abuse was constant and long-lived. I was a little sickened by what appeared to be relishing of recounting the horrors.
Finally, as was mentioned by a previous reviewer, I was bothered by the contention in this book that Carcaterra's entire life was unutterably changed by being told in adolescence of his father's crime. By my calculation, this revelation must have come shortly after Carcaterra was released from his time in a juvenile detention center (as depicted in Sleepers), where he suffered horrific abuse. No mention is made anywhere in A Safe Place of the dear friends described in Sleepers, nor of the crime, trial, and sentence that all went through together. This redoubles the doubt of the accounting of this part of Carcaterra's life. Is one book true and the other false? Surely the time spent in juvenile detention was equally as life-changing as finding out about his father's past.
Carcaterra must have reflected on his own violent (though accidental) crime and jail time when he learned his father had a similar past. Inclusion of this aspect of his discovery of his father's past would have made a more believable story and would have made this reader more comfortable with balancing the two accounts of Carcaterra's coming of age.

14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good read, but inconsistent with 'Sleepers', March 1, 2000

By 

John (South Africa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Safe Place : The True Story of a Father,a Son,a Murder (Mass Market Paperback)

Although I enjoyed this book, especially the harrowing and sometimes amusing descriptions of life in Hell's Kitchen, I was disappointed that the part of Carcaterra's life which must have had the greatest effect on him, his experience in the boys' home, described in 'Sleepers', was not even mentioned. Even the close friends he has in his 'Sleepers' account do not feature at all, which makes one wonder how factual their existence is and how credible that whole story is (although I'm sure he wasn't making it all up).

Caracterra attributes the change in his personality to the discovery that his father is a murderer, but surely the experiences in the boys' home had just as negative and life-changing an effect on him.

The story of Lorenzo's life is told well, with interesting parallels between his father's and mother's first marriages - I like the way they were juxtaposed.

I found his hero-worshipping of his father, even before he knew of his murderer status, rather strange, as it just didn't ring true that a child so abused would still love his father - maybe this is just my poor understanding of their relationship.

Ultimately, this is a worthwhile read, although not quite as gripping as 'Sleepers'.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK book but sometimes brutally violent.., October 23, 2010

By 

Ryan the Lamanite - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Safe Place (Kindle Edition)

I started off the book really enjoying it. I really like Carcaterra as an author and both Gangster and Sleepers are among my favorite stories. I enjoyed this book to a point but found myself cringing at the brutal discriptions of violence when his father was beating and sometimes raping his mother. I guess there was honestly a point where I ended up not wanting to live this life with him and subsequently not want to finish the book either. (Although I did finish it.) Carcaterra is a gifted writer insomuch as he uses his powers for good. I would have liked to see more of a connection to the Sleepers saga. I was disappointed that he never got around to connecting the dots between the two points in his life. C'est la vie! Good read if you arent looking for a extension of Sleepers and don't mind the brutal discriptive spousal abuse that occurs every other page.