Customer Reviews

Street Boys

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Let's recognize some basics: In September 1943, a small number of people, most of them young orphans, fought a pitched street battle with German tanks and soliders in the dying days of the war in Naples. Quattro Giornate is an historic event; "Street Boys" is not. Some will say the book reads better as a screenplay; the Italians already made the movie, forty years ago. Books need to be copy edited for spelling, accuracy and consistency; "Street Boys" is missing some of this. Some want the book to be truer to the history or at least more realistic; "Street Boys" has battle scenes that read like a cross among "Saving Private Ryan", "The Little Rascals", and the Hardy Boys.

Enter 'Quattro Giornate' along with 'Napoli' and '1943' in a Google search and you can find enough history to judge the relative accuracy of this book. If you're looking for historical accuracy, this book is not it. Men and women were more of a presence in the battle; the Germans were not the pathetic, Keystone Cops portrayed in the book. Naples was crushed, literally and figuratively, by petty, evil, vengeful Germans, but not without a fight, however small and however late.

The characters are cardboard. Picture Colin Farrell as the one-man American army. Select any llithesome, nubile, dark-haired, olive skinned starlet du jour to play Nunzia. Or a young Leonard DiCaprio as the partisan child leader, Vincenzo. But the scenery and weather are pretty, no matter how much desolation brought on by the war. The events are heroic and ripe for Hollywood over-the-top scenes, e.g., menancing Germans shot by amazingly accurate fire from untrained youths at the last second.

"Street Boys" could be a whole lot better. The story deserves better. But I would not dismiss this book, if only because the basic story should be remembered and writing your own screenplay in your head from a mediocre book is a much better exercise then watching a bad or even mediocre movie.

I kept thinking, while I was reading Street Boys, that this book is a terrible insult to the actual street fighters who held off the nazis and their panzers in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, only to be lost in the end.

The author, to compound the error, makes every action scene uninteresting and unbelievable, and every emotional scene (death and love) devoid of emotion. Episodes of dying children are smarmy or corny, or both at once. Children outsmart and overwhelm seasoned soldiers who have far superior firepower at every turn.

Even the most egregious mistakes supposedly made by the Germans would not have enabled outnumbered and overmatched children to destroy a panzer division and hundreds of enemy troops, along with a German tanker.

I hope no one buys this book. I hope no one pays to see the movie. I hope people read Mila 18 by Leon Uris instead.

This is the third Carcaterra book that I have read (Sleepers, Apaches) and by far the worst. The scenes in this book are so unbelievable, I found myself stressed about finishing the final 1/3 of the book. There is a stead-fast rule in this book: If a character has a name, he/she is probably not going to die. I feel Carcaterra realized this in coming to the end of writing, so he kills off several characters in a matter of pages.

I also feel that Carcaterra remembered that he introduced the idea of conspiracy from the other street boys in the late rounds of writing and realized that he had to kill their leader before moving forward.

Overall, I would not recommend this book to anyone. I regretfully picked this book up in an airport bookstore based on my past experience with Carcaterra novels. This will be my last based on the fact that I felt he was whoring his writing out and begging for a movie deal with his latest work.

While waiting to board on my last flight from Houston to Europe, I bumped into this last work by Carcaterra. I did not read "Sleepers", so this was my first experience, but, regretfully, I am not going to account as a memorable one.

I am Neapolitan and the memory of the stories told by my Grandma of the famous "Quattro Giornate" (the four days of Naples)are still vivid in my memory.

Maybe my expectation was different, maybe to high, considering how sacred is this event in our minds: the conclusion was rather disappointing.

I noticed several criticisms already (the confusing geographical description, the mispelled Italian words) and I share this view, although I do not account for these to be crucial points in the assessment of the value of this book.

However, everything is so artificial and fake. I accept the romance between Nunzia and Connors, but the real story is a story of misery, starvation, blood and (how many) tears.

The Nazis look like puppets, falling under the shots of the clever Neapolitan kids: that is not true! How many died because of the ferocity of the German soldiers!

The whole plot seems to be taken from a Travel Guide. Only the most historical and touristic places are mentioned in the book. And how many common sayings about Neapolitans: the truth is the opposite; we hide our virtues and talk mainly of our flaws!

And then, it was not just kids: let's be realistic! There were several adults still around and, absolutely not mentioned in the book, the fundamental role of women (the mammas) was absolutely neglected: they were the logistic supply and the field hospitals at the same time.

There is a lot to say about the 4 giornate: Carcaterra scratched just the top rusty part of the lid .....

When I read somewhere that Mr. Carcaterra was the author of the book on which the film "Sleepers" was based, I thought that I would at the very least get a well-structured, exciting story about one of my favorite topics, WWII. Boy was I wrong! Instead the novel turns out to be something akin to a script for a Jerry Bruckheimer-Michael Bay production. Here's why:

1. The characters are hollow and one-dimensional. I felt no attachment to any of the lead characters, and the one most interesting to me is never fleshed-out and is wasted three-quarters of the way through.

2. There are so many inconsistencies, I had to force myself to finish the book midway through. Unless everyone in Naples, from the American to the Neopolitans to the Germans, all spoke one language, how were they able to understand everything and communicate so clearly to one another? How exactly did those street boys in the zoo understand what was said between the two German snipers?

3. Most of the action is ludicrous and so cliched. The setups, I swear, seem like they were lifted from some Bruce Willis action flick. Am I really to believe that an army of 200 tykes could actually take on one of Germany's lauded Panzer divisions, who were both feared and respected as the best fighting armored army of the war, and affect as much damage as they did? And the way Carcaterra writes the Nazi soldiers is straight out of a propaganda action flick during the war.

4. The romance between Steve and Nunzia feels tacked on and is incredibly formless and dull.

5. The dialogue is as cheesy as it gets. I'm talking groan-inducing. And everyone sounds the same; I had a hard time distinguishing the voices of each character.

To sum it up, the book is lazy, phony and sloppy. It starts out okay, but by the halfway point it becomes a struggle to get through without thinking of that other book you could have been reading instead. I can't really recommend the book to anyone, especially to fans of WWII historical novels or to those of the action genre.

During WW II, when the Nazis realized their fate was sealed, the city of Naples became a target for their frustration and maniacal tenets of supremacy and destruction. Realizing they would no longer be able to use Naples as a strategic offensive locale, the orders were given to raze it to the ground.

There were 200 children orphaned and abandoned in the city they identified as their home. STREET BOYS is the story of their tenacious and magical efforts to prevent the Nazis from achieving their goal.

The universal theme of Good vs. Evil is depicted throughout the book, many times unfortunately, in vignettes that defy belief. Carcaterra's weakness in this book is his inability to abut the edge of absurdity but never cross it. Instead, the important scenes are so incredible even the most gullible reader will struggle to swallow without choking. Several times the youth, untrained and out-manned, engage the evil Nazis in battle and emerge victorious. The "kiddie guerrillas" manage to initially arm themselves with rifles previously jettisoned in 40 ft of water which they retrieve, dry out, and learn to expertly shoot. The youthful combatants also recover machineguns, ammo, grenades and tanks with minimum casualties while maximizing the kill of the trained but inefficient enemy.

I have liked Carcaterra's previous work but STREET BOYS falls short of his past excellence. It is very difficult to recommend but if you must read it, use the library.

I purchased this book because it was about two of my favorite topics, Naples and WWII. The author lured me into thinking this was a historical novel, but that is not true. He has no sense of geography. Anyone standing in Naples and facing the sea will have Vesuvio to their LEFT, not the right. Salerno is SOUTH of Naples. There were many errors in the Italian phrases in the book. The story seemed based on early sixties war films. Connors jeep apparently had a bottomless fuel tank. In spite of fierce battles all around, he and Nunzia find time for a "quickie". The German Colonel reacts to everything by slamming his fist on something. Charecters appearing in one part of the city, then another part of the city without the benefit of public transportation.

There are countless true stories about the bravery of the Sgunnizzi [street boys] that need to be told. Perhaps another author will do them justice.

Mr. Carcaterra, your mistakes were so evident in the text that I hardly feel a need to reveal them. However, for the sake of the public, here they are:

1. Do you even know what you are doing with the history of this event? You have taken this battle of guts and courage from cowering, left behind children and made into into Helms Deep. The cleverness and cunning of your characters, while cute, was a complete insult to their legacy of ultimate destruction against an overwhelming force of perhaps the mightiest soldiers of their era. That said, I disagree with the reviewers who have only skimmed the text and say that only two kids die. In truth I could count maybe twenty deaths of children in your almost fantastical story.

2. You made me want to cry. And cry and cry and cry. And after I got done crying, cry some more. Your battle scenes were HORRIBLE! In every one you have kids come out of buildings like Gorillas, pull grenades and Molotov cocktails from their butts, kill 100 Nazis and under fire run to the enemy lines to steal their guns before retreating back into the buildings and sewers with their newly acquired weaponry. You made the German army out to look like impotent fools touching their weapons for the first time, when in fact they were trained and able men who had fought for years, who had superior weaponry and an entire division of tanks. I remember in one battle scene you have your character Vincenzo lure unsuspecting Germans into a castle courtyard to be picked off and all but slaughtered by a few kids who had managed to lay Mines just before the soldiers bust into the courtyard. First off, the Germans would have either beaten the kid into submission for information when he approached them, or better yet, they would have shot him. And secondly, THIS IS NOT AN EPISODE OF "HOME ALONE!" The Germans would have spotted Mines roughly laid by the hands of Neapolitan children. Even with superior position on the Germans, the tank that the Germans had brought into the courtyard with them would have crumbled the structure from the inside out in a matter of minuets, taking the children with the rubble to the jagged floor below. Those who didn't die on impact would have found themselves alone, weaponless and outnumbered by battle-hardened German soldiers that would have taken their lives without uncommon consequence. Frankly, Mr. Carcaterra, these kids were fighting a lost cause that would consume all of their lives before liberation and it wouldn't have been a single American bomber that took out an entire panzer division.

3. All impracticalities aside, your writing and plot structure was ill developed. You obviously didn't take that much time planning out the succession of events. About 100 pages before the "immoral" snipers got in a firefight with the children that finally took their lives, you introduced them in the middle of the conflicts moving into the central city. THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN THERE. NEVER! Didn't you go to college, because your preliminary English teacher is shaking his head in sorrow. You need to spend more time thinking about your writing before sending it off to be published on a gimmick, simply because you're a best selling author!

To conclude, you are an excellent writer and I am sure a great person, but you blew it with this one. Disappointing, yes, but still another addition to the library. Suggested only to those few brave who are willing to be a bit experimental with history.

Mat Perrin, esq.

Having been somewhat of a fan in the past, I thought I'd get a bit of a lift out of Carcaterra's latest work. Unfortunately, the only lift out of this made-for-the-screen tripe is what Carcaterra took from earlier and vastly better renditions of the historic boys uprising in Naples over those four days in 1943. He says in the opening that the locations and scenes are wholly new and what he created for "Street Boys," but it was all done before in much better, truer, and heartfelt books. A few earlier reviews list some, but one in particular that comes to mind is a book called "Four Days of Naples." Not to mention, the Italians made a movie as well, and it was up for an Academy Award. I wonder if Carcaterra read or saw any of those. I wouldn't be surprised given all the hoopla that surrounded the validity and release of his earlier "Sleepers." Anyway, all I'm trying to say here is that I was very disappointed in the book. The material deserves a much better focus and sincere author, someone who actually cares as much about the historic boys as Carcaterra does the check he probably received for hacking out this paper-thin comic.

What a disappointment! There is very little in this book that merits even one star, but that's as low as I could find.

Carcaterra knows virtually nothing of military tactics or equipment, and very little of the events in Naples that this book tries to portray.

He is completely out of his element in writing this story, and anyone who has ever served in the military will be unable to finish the book

Perhaps Carcaterra should stay with the "Sleepers" theme, which he seems to know about.