Family Business

This book was great. That surprised me. And I didn't have to read the previous novels. My liking for this book doesn't really show in this review, and I didn't plan on writing so much about it. Once I started, however, I couldn't stop.

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A dying breed of crook

first published in The Star, 27 May 2012


Apparently, Paramount Pictures had "allowed" the release of The Godfather Returns in 2004, the sequel to the original Godfather novel. But the next sequel, said to have been released without Paramount's knowledge in 2006 by the estate of Mario Puzo, reportedly didn't do so well.

Perhaps that's why Paramount, which claims it has rights over the Godfather franchise, sued to keep The Family Corleone, the "unauthorised" third book and possible bomb, from publication. Anthony Puzo, son of the late Mario and executor of his dad's estate, responded with a countersuit. A deal has since been struck to allow the book to be published, but nobody can be sure if there will be lasting peace between the two parties.

That's another book – or movie – by itself, but I'm talking about The Family Corleone today. It's a fine book, and it made me wonder if this legal battle is really about protecting the "legacy" of the franchise.

Set in the years 1933 to 1935, the prequel to The Godfather charts the rise of Vito Corleone from olive oil tauke to godfather of the New York crime families. A lot of this book also tells how Santino "Sonny" Corleone, Vito's impatient and reckless eldest son, came to follow in his father's footsteps.

Said to be adapted from unpublished material written by Puzo, it is divided into two "books" or arcs. "Mostro" (Monster) explores a bit about Vito and Sonny's pasts and how the latter, as a kid, came to know about his dad's other business. Years later, he's head of his own gang and shows how he's unlike his old man by robbing the liquor shipments of a powerful mob boss and selling the fruits of one such heist to the monster of this arc, the violent psychopath Luca Brasi.

The "Guerra" (War) arc kicks off soon after Vito finds out about Sonny's extracurricular activities, and that's when things get bloody for the Corleones and everybody else.

(I know some of you reading this online probably have or are going to open an extra window or tab with Wikipedia on, so I won't be telling you anything else about the plot. But I got help for the two Italian words from the glossary at the back. Thing is, 'bout half of 'em are swear words.)

The novel has a cinematic feel to it. Even the narration occasionally lapses into the informal lingo many of the characters use, lending it a certain warmth and familiarity.

Sprinklings of Italian add flavour to the delightfully engaging dialogue, from the Corleones' dinner table conversations and the salty, profanity-peppered exchanges between Sonny's gang members to the tense gangster round table conferences and "interrogation" sessions.

These guys are witty, charming and friendly. They can also pop your kneecaps or lop off your hands one heartbeat after you answer, "Oh, mother's fine, and the kid brother's in school, thanks for askin'." That being said, reading these guys lob racial epithets at each other, even in jest, can make one uncomfortable.

It's the closest you'll ever get to "watch" it, at least until the film adaptation comes out, if at all. Any other style wouldn't do.

Being what it is, there are some uncanny moments. At one point, Vito pays Luca Brasi a visit, seemingly unarmed and alone, and comes away unscathed. Several other characters escape death because of some unwritten code of honour or character quirk and stuff like that. But that's the stuff gangster movies – and novels – are made of.

Kudos goes to Ed Falco for his work on this novel. Incidentally, he's the uncle of Edith "Edie" Falco, who acted in The Sopranos, the TV series about an Italian-American mobster and his family.

I find myself thinking, though, whether the Mafia is still good grist for the fiction mill in the 21st century. What's the deal with mobster-inspired crime fiction, anyway?

So I look up a former chef turned author, who suggested in an essay that "...for purposes of fiction, organised criminality offers plenty of drama, ... plenty of situations in which characters find themselves in extreme circumstances with presumably difficult choices to make." Chef-Turned-Author also said that "All the real gangsters have seen The Godfather, One, Two, and maybe Three. They've seen Goodfellas. And these films made a powerful impression." No better seal of approval than that.

I suppose the kind of drama associated with the old-time gangsters offer writers opportunities to paint convincing psychological portraits of what would be complex characters that audiences can connect with. Another appealing aspect of such works, goes another school of thought, is the notion of honour. One tends to believe that it's Vito Corleone's conduct that inspires his capos' loyalty to him, a valuable asset in the long run. Who wouldn't want to work for a boss like that? Or be a boss like that?

But the Corleones' era seems to be over. And there are more bad guys out there now: religious fanatics, computer hackers, evil scientists, ecoterrorists and maybe even rogue Wall Street elements, plus a new breed of gangster who's all about bling, turf and power, and not much else.

Though some may feel that the novel's release is just business for the Puzos, I'd like to think that it has emerged as one last encore by the titular family whose on-screen exploits will, perhaps, forever remain legend. And what an encore it is.

Viva i Corleone.

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The Family Corleone

Ed Falco
Grand Central Publishing (May 2012)
436 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-1-4555-1616-2

Coming Soon To E-Readers?

The book trailer. Is it the next big book marketing tool?

Take a gander at these teasers for Amish Tripathi's Shiva Trilogy. And here are some teasers for The Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer. How about this nifty video for Scott Westerfeld's Girl Genius-like Leviathan?

Compare these with the promotional videos for the next big sleep-killing app of the year. Aren't they all kind of ... elaborate for what are book previews? And don't you think Blizzard Entertainment should totally go into movies, instead of pretending to be a games company?

Author AJ Walkley, for one, appears to like the idea of a book trailer. For her, it's one more way of selling a book, and she can get her videographer and musician friends to help her make it, preferably at lower cost and, ideally, at much higher production values.

Walkley cites another author, Rex Pickett, who makes the case for book trailers with culture. Good short videos nab attention, as they should in an age where everything is getting more and more visual, and a book or series with its own trailers tend to stand out from the rest.


Showpiece or showboating?
Of course, there's a tendency to overproduce a book trailer, which in turn may foster unrealistic expectations for the book later on. And, well... book trailers don't quite showcase the actual product, which is mostly text. Many responses to some of the book trailer videos I've seen have called for a film adaptation to be made.

"Trailers for movies make sense — a visual medium for a visual product," Walkley says. "If you aim to read a book, why do you need anything more than the synopsis of the book before you know whether you want to read it?"

A commenter who claims to be "one of the pioneers of book trailer production" makes several good points about video as another medium on the Web and the proper approach to book trailers. I broke up the latter half into more paragraphs:

I understand your impulse to over produce your book trailer but in doing so you run the risk (as you learned) of misrepresenting the experience. My approach is generally — less is more.

As a producer I do not want to substitute my images for the images that the reader will conger themselves. I want to use video to suggest the experience that the book promises. The trailer should not interfere with the relationship between the author's words and the imagination of the reader. Whenever possible I like to draw from the book's cover and any illustrations the book might have. Beyond that the images should be suggestive and not explicit.

I don't think trailers can convince me to buy a book. It was, however, the visually arresting previews of Tripathi's books that got my attention. This was how I'd learnt of the trilogy's existence, though you'd need to watch each video to see that, oh, they're pitching a book and not a film or a video game.

But I think some parts need more research. From the trailer for the second book in Tripathi's Shiva trilogy, Secret of the Nagas, segment 0:23:

Is that a European-style longsword in ancient India? And what's the
Dark Wanderer from Diablo doing there?

With books going digital, a book trailer might make more sense if it's embedded in the e-book itself as a preview for an author's next book or, if the book is part of a series, the next volume. Not too different from the preview chapters at the back of printed books.


Let it be good
I can imagine the kinds of other video previews that could go into the last few 'pages' of an e-book: author notes, spoken by the author himself/herself; promotional skits, outtakes, maybe ads (though I wish there wouldn't be). Maybe a link somewhere where they can open a page and write an Amazon review and put it up, or post their thoughts immediately on Goodreads, Facebook or Twitter. Maybe, on some kind of Foursquare-ish app for books, an automatically updated status.

Collaborative efforts in producing book trailers, such as in Walkley's, would also mean more work for other indie film, digital animation and music sectors. The book trailer in this case becomes a showcase of the moviemaker and musician's respective talents.

But let's have creative, good-quality video content, please. Blurb- and back cover copy-writing may fade away with print, but the need for quality is a constant. And what matters most is the book itself.

More News: Sedaris, Screen Adaptations and Taliban Poetry

• Naked lies: David Sedaris, fabricator? Yes, I know it's The New Republic. I'm sorry.
• Can anyone still be optimistic about the future of "serious pubishing"?
• Two books are coming to the silver screen: Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot and Anthony Bourdain's Bone in the Throat.
• 25 famous rejections - perhaps you've heard of some of these before? I think rejections might have helped some - if not all - of these authors.
• Did the late Steve Jobs spook publishers into accepting the controversial agency model for selling e-books?
• NO, one book a year in the e-book era is not "slacking". One book a year is plenty.
• "Jackie the Ripper!" Could the infamous Whitechapel serial killer have been a woman? This book claims she may have been.
• Catholic Church "is not an institution for respectable people", says Hilary Mantel. Ow.
• Taliban poetry. Is surprisingly good.
• Phil "Sussudio" Collins, former Genesis drummer, singer, actor and ... expert on the Battle of the Alamo?
• The pleasure of being read to: the history of audio books.

News: Liberty And Love, And Other Pressing Matters

JAKIM's latest book promo
A big piece of book-related news last week was Uganda-born Canadian writer Irshad Manji's talk at the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall last Saturday, which may or may not have anything to do with the Malay translation of her book, Allah, Liberty and Love, published by ZI Publications.

Manji is also known for another book, The Trouble with Islam. She's director of the Moral Courage Project at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, and founder and president of Project Ijthiad, a "charitable organization promoting a 'tradition of critical thinking, debate and dissent' in Islam." Her presence here and her book have, naturally, raised some hackles.

I don't know about the book, but the reporting bums me out. Like, is it such a big deal that she's a "lesbian Muslim writer"? So it seems her books are not only "dangerous" but, oh, horrors, she's reportedly also a le-e-e-esbian. Like that is all you need to know.

Here, read some thoughts about this, because I don't think I can add to the debate.

Before JAKIM raised the alarm, I'd never even heard of Irshad Manji (bad books editor, bad!) Now, everybody does. And if her latest book is banned, say, nine months from today ... what's the point?

Censorship and sensibility
The Quote of the Week goes to Jessica Crispin at Bookslut: "Okay, it's nice and all that someone is fighting back against these stupid decisions to pull books off of library shelves, but does it have to be this book we're rallying around? They still yank To Kill a Mockingbird, you know."

Word.

Something else the West didn't invent
So Gutenberg, apparently, wasn't the first to invent the printing press or movable type. Gunpowder, the compass, paper money and now these. I'm getting a bit sick of experts unearthing Things That Came Out of China While Europe was in the Dark Ages but the Chinese Were Too Dumb to Perfect and Capitalise On. Today? They copy everything.

More writer tips
Reading the fine print: editing clauses in publishing contracts. It's a lot more comprehensive than what we have here, which is, "Make my manuscript SHINE!" And the raw material isn't always good. Also, here are 11 mistakes writers make when approaching literary agents.

Future career plan?
This infographic on the birth of a book is one of the more realistic representations of the book publishing process. Just so happens, I like mutton and goat's milk. And, like goats, I like coffee.

You know I will. And this pic needs to be on a t-shirt.
Original picture here.

Think I'll looking for a goat farm to buy when I'm too old to type shit. I might even plant coffee trees on the premises, too.

Tropic Tempers

Although it looks unrelated, Gone Bamboo is a sequel of sorts to Bone in the Throat, the salty, grimy and riotous crime novel that was one of Anthony Bourdain's early attempts at writing.

Former soldier and CIA-trained assassin Henry is hired by mob capo Jimmy "Pazz" Calabrese to kill mob boss Charles "Charlie Wagons" Iannello, who last appeared in Bone in the Throat as the deux ex machina who saved the protagonist Tommy Pagano from retribution by more mob figures. The hit fails.

Now a federal witness for the US government in a trial against Calabrese, Charlie has gone into hiding in the same Caribbean backyard where Henry and his hard-nosed wife Frances are hiding at. Concerned over the possibility of tensions between Charlie and Henry causing trouble on the island, Charlie's minder, a former associate of Henry's, urges the hit man to spare Charlie and make amends with him.

To that end, Henry and Frances become pals with Tommy and his girlfriend Cheryl who we last saw in Bone in the Throat and are now eking a living in the same tropical paradise as owners of a restaurant.

Trouble comes in the form of Irish thug Kevin, hired by Calabrese's underlings to get rid of Charlie and anyone who stands in the way.

Like the previous book, Gone Bamboo draws heavily on Bourdain's experiences, but also weaves in a wistful scenario where he settles permanently in his Caribbean island getaway of St Martin. A local example of people like that is writer Tom McLaughlin.

The plot, meanwhile, isn't as tightly woven as the previous book. Yeah, Henry, make friends with Charlie, the guy who needs to shit in a bag (thanks to you), or you might make our job harder. Why couldn't they, say, pay these two to simply vanish for a while until things blow over?

Of all the quirks Bourdain could infuse his characters with: why make Calabrese a cross-dresser, other than to make him even more despicable? The vivid imagery doesn't help; halfway through chapter one, you'd want to do the characters a favour and blow him up with a dozen car bombs to kingdom come and gone.

I also got the feeling that Bourdain is somehow pitching the go-bamboo route to readers. The atmosphere certainly worked its magic on Kevin. Not long after his arrival, the Irishman goes native, sunbathing and skinny-dipping with his new girlfriend. But reality eventually intrudes, setting up some explosive encounters as hits are made and scores are settled.

It's no coincidence that Bourdain wrote this book in St Martin. He said before that he feels relaxed there; perhaps there is a connection. Bone: chef in the city, what Tony B used to be, and Bamboo: beach bum, a life he probably wanted even more, for his then-wife Nancy and himself. The scene where Frances tosses a half-eaten chicken leg to a stray dog echoes something similar in the epilogue to A Cook's Tour.

Despite the connection between the two, both Bone and Bamboo can be considered independent books. Bourdain has made the best of his experiences and weaves them into entertaining, albeit fast-paced and violent, novels.

For weary followers of his adventures since then, his crime novels feel dated compared to his works of non-fiction, which are arguably more real and interesting. After all, he doesn't need to dream any more. He's living it.

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Gone Bamboo

Anthony Bourdain
Canongate (2000)
286 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-85786-112-2

Rescuing The Book Review And The Future Of Publishing

Can the Internet save the book review? Probably. Can Kakutani save the book review? Uh...

...If any book reviewer can save the review, I'd put my money - but not a whole lot - on these two: Lev Grossman, and a 16-year-old book critic that makes me look like a hack. I feel ancient... (what's with the hair?)


Other news

• Trying to peer into the crystal ball of the publishing industry - a Canadian perspective. And here's Amazon's perspective.
• A six-figure deal for a seven-book series: Is Samantha Shannon the next JK Rowling? Also: Why Barry Eisler walked away from a half-million-dollar book deal.
• Here, have some Taliban poetry. And a senior Kuwaiti books censor speaks. No relationship whatsoever between the two.
• Chinese dissident author Ma Jian on another fellow dissident: Qu Yuan, who's generally associated with glutinous rice dumplings and the Dragon Boat Festival. "...the story of Qu Yuan is quite possibly the story of all genuine, non state-approved Chinese authors."
• Young historians risk academic cred in packaging their research as commercial books. Sounds kind of like ... Niall Ferguson, don't you think?
• An essay on how we should speak English appears to make the case for "keep it simple" and "less is more".
• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt plans to file for Chapter 11, a.k.a looking for bankruptcy protection.
• The fate of used book stores in the digital age.
• US study suggests readers may be influenced by characters in fiction. Does this explain book bans?
• Even copy editors have bad days.
• Want to know how to write best-sellers for India?
• Banned: No "Shades of Grey" in Wisconsin, Georgia and Florida libraries.

Whimsical Whodunnit

A brilliant, engaging tale of murder and missing persons


"A murder mystery that solves itself" is the best way I can describe Kate Atkinson's Started Early, Took My Dog. The title comes from the first line from an Emily Dickinson poem, and the novel is set in modern-day England.

Security chief and former policewoman Tracy Waterhouse is having a generally crappy day when she spies hooker Kelly Cross dragging a little girl by the hand. Driven by an impulse, she buys the child with money meant for the workman renovating her house. Two people witness the exchange: Jackson Brodie and an old woman called Mathilda Squires.

With Waterhouse's purchase of the little girl, the ball, as they say, starts rolling. And, as promised, all three will learn that "the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished."

Back in the late Seventies, when a Jack-the-Ripper-style serial killer was on the rampage, she and her partner found the child of a murdered woman at the crime scene, a boy who kept asking for his sister. Spirited away by a social worker, the child was never seen again.

Pieces of that puzzle start falling into place as the mystery of that years-old crime begins unravelling like a badly-knit sweater through the viewpoints of three protagonists: Waterhouse, who goes into hiding with Courtney, the girl she now 'owns'; Brodie, another former policeman and now private eye, who rescues an abused dog he names "The Ambassador" (hey, it was on the tag); and Squires, also known as "Tilly", an old actress on her way towards dementia hell.

The novel follows the main characters as they get inadvertently tangled up in the old murder and a possibly related cover-up. None of them appear to be driving the investigation, actively solving it and looking for clues.

Except Brodie, perhaps, but he's on another seemingly unrelated case. We explore their own pasts and how they came to be there. In between, milestones in the present storyline send us back thirty years ago, and towards the end, we finally see how it all happened, and how the loose ends get tied up so nicely.

The non-linear storyline works here somehow. Atkinson does it well, and also manages to stay, for the most part, out of sight. Little of her writing voice is evident... even though this is the first book of hers I've read, that's how it feels.

If there were any messages, morals and the like, I didn't notice as I read, teased on by a murder mystery made more brilliant and intriguing by splitting itself in parts and scattering them throughout three decades for me to find and put together.

Some may find the assembly part tedious and confusing, and it's not clear whether some pieces belong in the present or back in the past.

For me, the end result was satisfying enough that I didn't mind that the novel made me work a little. Nor did I care about the unanswered questions (like, who's Courtney and what's the story behind The Ambassador) once the puzzle was solved. Or did I just focus on the main puzzle itself and totally missed the clues to other little mysteries inside?

...Whatever.

When you pick up this book, just open it, enjoy the puzzle-solving and forget what's between the lines. You can revisit the latter afterwards if you want to.


This review was based on an andvace reading copy. Book information is based on a more recent release.

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Started Early, Took My Dog

Kate Atkinson
Transworld Publishers (2011)
493 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 9780552776851