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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Startling Bad, January 5, 2002
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.
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14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good read, but inconsistent with 'Sleepers', March 1, 2000
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'.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
OK book but sometimes brutally violent.., October 23, 2010
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.
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