Menu
Maybe someday
31
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
28/100Critics
35/100Scholars
Author:
Russell Shorto
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
Date:
February 2, 2021
Family secrets emerge as a best-selling author dives into the history of the mob in small-town America.
What The Reviewers Say
... while the book colorfully summons what Mr. Shorto calls 'the era of zoot suits and Studebakers,' it doesn’t romanticize the mob.
... a beautifully rendered, spellbinding saga about family secrets and taboos.
In the end, this is not a mob story. It’s a story of family dynamics. Of love and loss and betrayal. Of Shorto’s hometown. Of his own relationship with his father and his father’s relationship with his father. In other words, it’s a family memoir. Whether Shorto likes it or not. His reluctance — perhaps a mere literary device — is a roadblock. But once Shorto’s on the highway, steering us along with his usual humor and eye for quirky detail, settling an hour from his hometown for easy access, we are with him. All the way, as Sinatra would say..
Do we really need another Mafioso-in-the-family memoir?.
