AUTHOR: Karen Gravano
PUBLISHED: 2012
GENRE: Non-Fiction
Before we start: I am of the belief that one’s use of punctuation can be a good indicator of personality.The “And Me!”at the end of the title - highlighted in red, to boot - is an excellent foreshadowing of the self-centered attention seeking and desperate pleas of “I’m my own person, damn it!” that are to come.
We’ve moved on from America’s Next Top Model to a newer reality show: Mob Wives.1 VH1’s show about a bunch of mafia women is only two seasons old but has already established itself as a guilty pleasure extraordinaire. The biggest name on Mob Wives is Karen Gravano, who has just returned to Staten Island to promote her book and stir the pot. Her fame - and the reason she has a book deal – rests with her lineage: she is the daughter of Sammy the Bull, the infamous mafia hit man turned informant. Sammy had long been a loyal soldier to the family, and is arrested with the Teflon Don himself, John Gotti, for murder. But when it becomes clear that Gotti intended to hoist all the blame on Gravano, the Bull turns state’s evidence. When Gravano turns, his daughter is heartbroken. Her father has betrayed everything he taught her to hold dear, and she shuns him as badly as the mobsters he helps put behind bars. She rebels, getting into drug running and partying. Eventually, after her entire family is indicted in a drug ring, she decides to rebuild her life and her relationship with her father.2
Try as she might to say otherwise, Karen is not the heart of this book. It’s Sammy’s story all the way. All the notable moments of her childhood play out against the backdrop of her father: how Uncle Paul3 came to her communion, how their new house was renovated to make it impossible to break into, how she is shunned from her tony private school because of her father. She may insist that she’s her own woman, but it’s obvious that her choices stem from one very clear source, right up to the decision to make her fame and fortune off her father’s name. She’s a bit player in her own life story.
To make it worse, for a book about the mafia, it’s all intensely uninteresting. The entire book has this tone of whininess, like Karen can’t believe they’re all being so mean to her! This impression might be somewhat colored by the fact that I find her to be incredibly annoying on Mob Wives, but even without the show, the book would irritate. The writing is stunted: "at the top of the stairs, if you went to the left it was Gerald's room and to the right was my room". It's not wrong per se, but it's awkward and immature. Worse yet, the writing is often repetitive, with a thought appearing at the beginning of a sentence and then again at the end.
It’s only 256 pages but they could have easily trimmed it down to 200. To plump up the story we get such insights as, "Gerald and I loved our eggs sunny-side up, which we called "dunky" eggs because of the nice puddle of yolk to dunk our toast in". Someone really should have told her that anybody reading a book about the mafia doesn't care about her cutesy names for her eggs. Hell, nobody cares about that. It seems like a little thing, but those little things are all this book has.
A side note: many have denounced the book for its seemingly callous treatment of the fact that her father is, in fact, a murderer. In her defense, Karen lived a life where crime and killing were an expected part of doing business. The mafia lifestyle was her normal. To suddenly act like she was horrified by it all would be disingenuous. She admits that he was a killer but he was also her father, and she never saw the cold, calculating side of him. She recounts the facts as she saw them, and so in this case is truthful to herself.
Under all the hoopla, it's just a badly-written story. She doesn't do herself favors by acting the fool on Mob Wives. She would have been far better off if she had left the notoriety to her father and focused on living her own life.
LENGTH: 256 Pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Nothing like using a reality TV show to publicize your book.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: No. Watch some Mob Wives instead. At least then you’ll get some Big Ang.
1 It also features what is the greatest advancement in reality TV – nay, perhaps all TV – in recent history: Big Ang. Big Ang is amazing. She sounds like Harvey Fierstein if he was suffering from smoke inhalation. She has giant boobs and giant lips and the speech pattern of someone just waking up from surgery. If you haven’t seen the show, go Google “Big Ang” and watch a couple videos. You’ll thank me later. Big Ang’s co-stars are:
- Karen (see above);
- Drita, whose two settings are vaguely funny and “I’M GONNA CUT YOU, BITCH!”;
- Ramona, whose two settings are smarmy and “I’M GONNA CUT YOU, BITCH!”;
- Renee, who is always this close to a complete and utter psychological meltdown; and,
- Carla, who… well, Carla doesn’t really do anything except protest she does whatever she wants.
But seriously. Big Ang. Amazing.
2If the book is to believed, only Gravano’s brother, Gerald, is involved in the ring, but Karen and her parents are charged along with him as they had in the past loaned him money. Ironically, Sammy gets 20 years for this charge, far longer than the 6 years he got for 19 murders. Yea, American justice system!
3"Uncle Paul” being Paul Castellano, the head of the Gambino crime family. Castellano would eventually be murdered on orders from John Gotti.
No comments:
Post a Comment