Looking For Alaska: A Review

Green, J. (2005). Looking For Alaska.  Penguin Random House, New York.

Has it really been only ten years since John Green's debut novel, Looking for Alaska, was published?  Ten years since the Illustrious Mr. Green sprouted his other works, like Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines, and the "Citizen Kane" of teen novels (at least to him), The Fault in Our Stars?  If you note a certain sarcasm about Green, it's because I have it.  I only saw the film version of The Fault in Our Stars, and to be honest, I found much fault in the film. Quoting Shakespeare doesn't mean BEING Shakespeare, even to a group of dimwitted teens.  Looking for Alaska, based partially on Green's own experiences at boarding school, is a book beloved by many: readers and critics alike. 

Sorry, I'm not in either group.

Miles Halter leaves his public high school in Florida to go the Culver Creek Preparatory High School in Alabama, which was his father's alma mater.  He goes seeking "the Great Perhaps", an answer to what is 'out there', beyond this mortal coil.  At CCPH, he rooms with Chip Martin, nicknamed "The Colonel".  The Colonel takes one look at skinny Miles Halter and instantly dubs him "Pudge".  Miles/Pudge also meets three other people who will be important: the Japanese student/beat-box impresario Takumi, the beautiful Romanian student Lara (who has an accent), and Alaska Young.

Ah, Alaska Young.  The beautiful, enigmatic, troubled, fascinating, erotic Alaska Young.  Pudge is instantly drawn to this figure who is hard to figure out.  She drinks, she smokes, she is someone Pudge finds desirable sexually and emotionally (despite her being a basketcase).  While she has a boyfriend, a college student named Jake, Alaska can be coy with our innocent narrator Miles.  Pudge has a fixation with people's last words, so much so that he only reads the ends of biographies to find what was the last thing they said.  Perhaps there are words of wisdom within them that he can draw from (his seeking "the Great Perhaps" comes from someone's last words).  Alaska, learning this, gives him what are reportedly Simon Bolivar's last words, "How can I ever get out of this labyrinth?"

This Collective as I call it is forever at war with The Weekday Warriors, those wealthy kids who leave Culver Creek on the weekends.  The group Pudge finds himself in performs pranks on the Weekday Warriors, especially after a couple of them, for retribution for something done last year, almost end up drowning poor Pudge (who just got there).  As time goes by, with Pudge introduced to the wonders of drinking, smoking, and near the middle part of the book, a blowjob (thanks, Romanian beauty queen), he still can't let go of his idea of Alaska.  Alaska: the girl with the tragic history, who watched her mother die and was so paralyzed with fear and shock she didn't call the police for help.  The Colonel, a short guy with a chip on his shoulder (get it, "Chip"), wants to show up his hoity-toity classmates. 

Then comes The Day.  A drunk Alaska finally grants Pudge what he's long longed for: a passionate make-out session.  She promises that this is 'to be continued', but later that night an even drunker Alaska comes in, hysterical and screaming.  Despite her being visibly intoxicated and highly emotional, Pudge and the Colonel help her drive out of Culver Creek by distracting The Eagle (the headmaster).  The last thing she says to them is "God oh God,  I'm so sorry."

The next day, the school learns that she was killed in a car accident, her having run headfirst into a police car that was investigating a jackknifed truck.  A group of flowers was found in her car.

The rest of Looking for Alaska involves the Colonel and Pudge attempting to investigate the real cause of death.  Was it perhaps suicide?  Why was Alaska so hysterical?  Miles' own questioning of where Alaska went (if she went anywhere, since Miles has no belief in the afterlife) as well as his own guilt about letting her drive off in that condition plague him.  He ignores Lara, who was something of a girlfriend to him.  The Investigation is about the only thing that keeps him going, that an a posthumous prank from Alaska Young involving a male stripper posing as a Professor of Psychology specializing in teenagers and sexuality.  He begins what sounds like a typical speech, but when Lara, preplanned, shouts for him to take his clothes off, Maxx the Stripper goes full Channing Tatum.  As no one can be specifically pointed out to be the mastermind, no one gets punished.

In the end, Takumi provides clues to The Investigation.  We discover that the night of Alaska's death was the anniversary of her mother's death.  She had always placed flowers on her mother's grave on the anniversary, but this year she forgot.  In her distraught state, she may have gone to try and place them now, or perhaps Alaska did really aim for the police car out of guilt.  In any case, Alaska is dead, as is Miles' idealization of her. He reconciles himself to that.

What I find hard about Young Adult novels in general is the idea that teens have greater insight and wisdom than everyone else despite their lack of actual life.  Green if anything, appears to be a master of encouraging teens to think they have special insight into the world.  In fact, Pudge's summing up of the whole matter in a letter to the Colonel before he leaves for home at term's end pretty much states so.

"And if Alaska took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have given her.  Forgetting her mother, failing her mother and her friends and herself--those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct.  Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be.  When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are.  We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken, We think that we are invincible because we are.  We cannot be born, and we cannot die".

Gobbledygook, I says, and phooey on Green for pushing such ideas.  I'm tired of teens and the writers who love them too much pushing this narrative that the young know more than the old, and that somehow their own little world is the real world.  Teens are quite destructible.  Adults are quite destructible.  We can choose to be destroyed by the forces oppressing us, or we can accept that the world is something we can make into something beautiful or something awful.  We have the power of choice.  Alaska's choice was simple: to drink too much, smoke too much, tease Pudge, and then collapse when she remembered what she had forgotten.  Pudge and the Colonel, and Takumi's choices were also easy: they could have stopped Alaska from driving.  They all had a hand in Alaska's death, and they proved that Alaska was quite destructible.

I tire of teenagers who think they know all the answers to all the questions, and especially of those who coddle such notions.

In a sense, Alaska did kill herself, but not perhaps by deliberately running into the police car.  She killed herself long before getting behind the wheel, by drinking too much to drown the guilt she had over something she could not control.  It's interesting that Alaska's inability to call 911 when her mother died mirrors Ray Charles' inability to call for help when his younger brother drowned in the tub (the film Ray, which came out in 2004, came to mind for some reason).  Ray Charles not only carried the guilt about that, but he even went blind.  Yet, despite all that (and being black to boot), Ray Charles not only managed to survive, but thrive.  Alaska, a white girl who manages to go to a posh school which probably costs her father a pretty penny, can't.

We all suffer loss, we all suffer pain.  We can shoulder it in many ways: family, friends, faith.  Alaska had a few of the second, at least one of the first, but none of the third.  She did have the bottle and the smokes, which make for a poor substitute.

I never understood Pudge's idealization of Alaska. Yes, she must have been quite beautiful physically, but she was also openly troubled from the get-go.  He must be a particularly weak person to not say at one point that Alaska was trouble.  He never objected to any of the Colonel's stunts or in the drinking and smoking which he was introduced to (as a side note, I managed to go through high school without drinking or smoking, but then, I went to public high school).  Perhaps though, I should not be too hard on that subject.  We all have a tendency to romanticize the past, to idealize someone at some point.  Most of us though, get over it.

I find it interesting that Pudge is bothered by the fact that he will never know Alaska's final words.  Actually, let me field that question.  Pudge DOES know Alaska's final words.  They were, "God oh God, I'm so sorry".  As there was no one else to hear anything else she said, those would be the final recorded words of Alaska Young.  I don't understand why Green doesn't allow Pudge to accept that those were her final words.

What I found was that Pudge and Company were themselves a bit elitist.  They held contempt for the Weekday Warriors to where they were angered that they would cry at the news of Alaska's death.  I found that the Colonel's crew had no compassion themselves.  Why couldn't the Weekday Warriors cry?  They, and I am speculating on this, weren't crying specifically for Alaska.  They were crying for themselves, for the fact that death now had become something real, something they had to face.  They now knew they were quite destructible.  Also, there is something called empathy.  I have cried at the deaths of people I don't know (like those women stoned to death or gay men tossed off buildings by ISIS).  According to Green though, I cannot do such things as feel for others.  I can only cry for those I know.

OK, I'll grant that perhaps since this is told from Miles' perspective this would be a natural reaction to seeing his 'enemies' cry at the death of his friend.  Still, that bothered me, the idea that one could not empathize for someone else.

Looking for Alaska has what I think has become a template for modern YA books: insecure boy, enigmatic girl, offbeat friends fighting against the 'cool kids', some sex, good amount of booze and smokes (legal and otherwise), with occasional dead people thrown in.  Based on my memories of the film I don't find much difference between Looking for Alaska and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  There are differences, of course, between them.  However, in many respects they share similar traits.

I admit to not finding Catcher in the Rye all that great, primarily because I read it in my thirties, not my teens.  Perhaps if I had read Looking for Alaska when I was in high school, I would have been as enamored of it (and of John Green as the literary light he sees himself as) as the many teens who swoon over people their own age who know they are indestructible.  I can see the appeal of these kinds of books: with their 'wisdom' about the struggles of rich and middle-class white children (curious how Green has few if any minorities in his books, as far as I know.  White privilege, anyone?).  For myself, I found Pudge's search for The Great Perhaps dull and slightly narcissistic, as if he was the first to ever fall in love with an idea or know of death at a young age. I found it all a little smug, a little condescending, and frankly I can live with the idea that Alaska died because she drove drunk, not because of her own inward guilt.

Hey, Johnny...I have a few last words for you.  They are John Wilkes Booth's final words, as he looked on his hands as he lay dying. 

"Useless.  Useless".

Born 1977

Heaven help us if HE becomes 'the voice of our generation'.

Module 10--The Berlin Boxing Club: A Review

MODULE 10:
THE BERLIN BOXING CLUB:

by Robert Sharenow

Sharenow, R. (2011) The Berling Boxing Club. HarperTeen, New York.

The Berlin Boxing Club is a brilliant book.  This story, while fictional, plays so authentically that it reads almost like the memoirs of a young man who with a mixture of good luck and skill manages to escape the horror that would engulf all of Europe.  Integrating the real and the fiction, The Berlin Boxing Club crafts its story of triumph, tragedy, and a young man's growth to manhood all in a brilliant

Karl Stern is a secular German with Jewish heritage, but he doesn't think anything of it.  The Stern family is not religious (Karl's father, Sigmund, is at the very least a hostile agnostic if not an atheist).  The Sterns are an intellectual family: Sig is an art dealer, Mrs. Stern is a cultured though emotionally fragile wife, and Karl's younger sisters Hildy (for Hildegard) is a typical child.  He and Hildy are very close, and Karl gladly accepts Hildy's nickname for him: Spatz.  This is from her favorite children's book series about the adventures of a mouse named Winzig and its friend, a bird named Spatz, who always outwit the stern train station manager Fefelfarve.  The Spatz und Winzig stories inevitably had their call to arms, "There's adventure in the air...and cake to be eaten!"   Karl has an enthusiasm for cartoons and dreams of creating his own strip, even creating some Spatz und Winzig cartoons for Hildy..  Mr. Stern thinks these activities are a waste.

Despite Karl's lack of observing Judaism and his non-Jewish looks (he is fair and has a small nose, due to his only non-Jewish grandparent), he is still Jewish by heritage.  That makes him a target for the Wolf Pack, a group of bullies who are encouraged to violence by the growing rise of Nazism in Germany.  The Wolf Pack beat him up viciously (confirming Karl's Judaism when they pull his pants down and see he is circumcised).  Karl ends up urinating in front of them, adding further humiliation.

He goes to the Gallery Stern, which is facing tough times from two fronts.  First, the Sterns were big proponents of what has been declared "degenerate art", now forbidden by the Nazis.  Second, as Jews their business has dried up.  Finances are down and while they put up a brave front it's clear times are tough.  However, help comes from an unexpected source: legendary German boxer Max Schmeling, who has done business with Sigmund and is something of a patron.  Schmeling is not fooled by Karl's "falling down stairs" story: he knows boxing bruises when he sees them.  He also sees that Karl has the raw material to be a successful boxer.

Schmeling's wife, actress Anny Ondra, has taken a shine to a painting of Schmeling (one of the few that isn't the kitsch the Nazis like), and the boxer and Sigmund strikes a very reluctant deal.  He will give Karl boxing lessons in exchange for the painting.  Sigmund, who finds the sweet sport beneath intellectuals, isn't keen on the idea, but who can deny Max Schmeling?  Karl for his part, is thrilled.

Max Schmeling
1905-2005

Karl finds himself in the Berlin Boxing Club, where Max does show him a few things, but most of his training is really done by the BBC's owner, Worjyk, and Nebling, a big guy with a soft voice that stutters and quite a gentle man.  Despite Worjyk's hesitation, what Max says goes, and Karl begins training at the BBC.  He also follows Max's instructions about the 300 to the letter (100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 50 pull-ups, fifty minutes of running).  Over time, Karl begins to build himself up physically and begins to also gain the respect of the other BBC members.  He even wins a few fights and Max hopes Karl will be the German Youth Boxing Champion.

However, times continue to get tougher.  Karl's beloved Uncle Jacob is arrested (whether due to his Judaism or his Communist activities or both is unclear) and sent to Dachau.  The Nuremberg Laws strip Jews of basic rights and Karl is expelled from his school.  Hildy has rotten apples thrown at her because unlike Karl and his mother, she looks like Sigmund (read, more Jewish).  The Gallery is forced to close and only money from printing secret invitations to boys/men's only parties hosted by a transvestite known as The Countess keep them afloat (the Countess and Sigmund having served together in the war, with Sig having saved his life).  Max is too busy with his fights against legendary Joe Louis to give Karl or the rising anti-Semitism much thought or notice (though we learn he is displeased by it all).  Eventually, Karl's romance with his Aryan neighbor Greta is discovered and because he mixed with a non-Jew, the whole family is evicted from their apartment.  They take refuge in the closed gallery. 

Barney Ross
1909-1967

Despite this (or perhaps because of this), Karl continues to train, his looks shielding him mostly from the bigotry.  He even finds new heroes, a whole world of Jewish boxers he was unaware of, like the American Barney Ross. Karl finds inspiration in boxers like Ross, who show that Jews are able to fight, these Sons of Solomon, these Hebrew Hammers.  They are not ashamed, and neither is Karl.  He comes close to his goal of a championship, even getting a beautiful blue robe with "Berlin Boxing Club" on it, until he fights one of the Wolf Pack in the ring and after the bully's loss, the others reveal Karl's Jewish heritage, disqualifying him immediately.

Eventually, Sigmund and Karl attempt to defend their home during Kristallnacht, but Sigmund is stabbed by broken glass by the crazed thugs.  His mother manages to get her husband medical attention but is forced to leave Karl and Hildy behind.  With no one else to turn to, he asks help first from the Countess (who takes them away while dresses as a woman during the chaos), and finally from Schmeling himself.  Schmeling is appalled at the violence going on but his star has fallen after he fell to Louis. Still, despite the danger, Schmeling does what he can and helps Karl and Hildy find their mother.  She insists on them taking some random books with them, as she and Max have managed to get them passage to a ship bound for America (despite having to separate them).  She will continue to care for their father, and as they leave, Karl discovers that the books contain rare works of art that they can use for finances.  While Karl and Hildegard Stern manage to leave Nazi Germany for safety in America, they still wish their parents were with them.  Still, 'there's adventure in the air, and cake to be eaten'.

Cletus Seldin "The Hebrew Hammer"
Born 1986

I was extremely moved by The Berlin Boxing Club.  Robert Sharenow uses a first-person narrative that allows us into Karl's mind.  In many ways, Karl's story is that of many a young man who find that being different makes them a target.  In this case though, it is mixed with the horror of the anti-Semitism that the Nazis would turn into one of the most barbaric crimes in human history.

Karl does not become more observant or religious.  He still pretty much has no real interest in G-d.  However, over time he grows to accept and embrace his Jewish heritage, especially after learning that contrary to Nazi propaganda, Jews can be quite tough physically.  They are not the 'mongrel', weak people they insist they are.  They are strong, powerful, and Karl sees that being Jewish does not equal being weak.

The Berlin Boxing Club is a tragedy and a triumphant tale.  We see how a great romance with Greta (who genuinely loves him) is destroyed by the world, but she is powerless and afraid to do anything about it.  We also see that the members of the BBC cared only about one thing: boxing.  They had no interest in whether Karl was a Jew or whether anyone else was (we learn that another member kept his Judaism secret and managed to leave for Palestine).  Once his heritage is exposed, we see the real tragedy of the divisions people place on themselves and others.

I was saddened when I read that Karl, in his rush to leave the Championship, noticed too late he left his robe behind.  He never did get it back, and that detail saddened me tremendously.

Yuri Foreman: Born 1980.
Boxer.  Rabbinical Student.

Sharenow also created some astonishingly cinematic moments in The Berlin Boxing Club.  In his first public fight, Karl wins in an open-air area where rain had been threatening to erupt all day.  Once they lift his hands in victory, we learn the following. 

"At that moment a loud clap of thunder drowned out the crowd, and the clouds finally burst, as if slit open with a razor blade.  Thick sheets of rain poured down, causing the crowd to instantly scatter.  Nebling and Worjyk ran fro cover, and I was alone in the ring.  I let the rain fall on me, cooling my heated body, and looked around the empty ring with a deep feeling of satisfaction.  I had won my first fight".

Sharenow captures this moment beautifully, the images pouring from the page.  He has an amazing power of description, from the triumph of Karl's first victory to the horror of The Night of Broken Glass.  Sharenow paints vivid and realistic portraits not just of the situations but also of the characters, real or imagined.  Max Schmeling is true to history: there is no record of him ever being sympathetic to the Nazis and as Sharenow puts in a post-script, Schmeling did indeed save two Jewish children during Kristallnacht, and while Karl and Hildy were not based on them (they were two boys), from that one historic point Sharenow spun a brilliant story.

He also provided fascinating detail about the last days of the Weimar Republic.  Tales about men like The Countess or Sigmund's evolution from hostility to quiet embrace of his son's boxing and artistic aspirations would be enough, but Sharenow mixing them into Karl's own story makes for more interesting and brilliant reading.

I can't find much to fault with The Berlin Boxing Club.  It's an authentic voice of a young man who finds strength (physical and emotional) through boxing, and who despite the horrors around him, manages to survive.  It was wise of Sharenow not to give us a purely happy ending or to give us a different conclusion.  We now have to speculate whether Mr. and Mrs. Stern were murdered in a concentration camp or whether Hildy and Karl really were separated forever.  It's an unclear world they are going into, but at least at this point, they are safe.

 

BRIEF REVIEW DISCUSSION

In a review for The Berlin Boxing Club, it is noted that a theme is how there are "hidden heroes among us, and that we can aspire to dreams and heroism ourselves".  I think this is so true, as Karl becomes his own hero, who could aspire to be anything.  He could continue to be a boxer, or become an illustrator.  Karl Stern's future in America is whatever he wishes it to be, and even within the confines of Nazi Germany, he managed to go far.  He is an inspirational character, and while The Berlin Boxing Club is historical fiction, I think it is also inspirational.

PROGRAMMING SUGGESTIONS

An obvious program would be to host a youth boxing match.  We could also invite the local Jewish community to speak on the Holocaust, and have an illustration contest in the style of Spatz und Winzig.  I also think showing copies of the paintings involved in the "Degenerate Art" exhibit or creating their own 'degenerate art' would be a great way to contrast Nazi ideas of art with those of the times;  it ties in well with the book because Herr Stern was an art dealer. 



Robert Sharenow

REFERENCE:

[Review of the book The Berlin Boxing Club, by Robert Sharenow]. Retrieved from http://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/the-berlin-boxing-club/

Module 7--Son of the Mob: A Review

MODULE 7:

SON OF THE MOB by Gordon Korman

Korman, G. (2002). Son of the Mob. New York, Hyperion.

Son of the Mob takes a curious mix of reality and comedy.  It presents a plausible real-life scenario that young adults can relate to while at the same time picks an extreme example of family life interfering with private life.  Son of the Mob is an amusing, well-paced story that is a little bit Romeo & Juliet, a little bit Clueless, and a little bit Goodfellas.

Vince Luca is in many ways like all seventeen-year-olds.  He has no social life apart from his whiny sex-obsessed friend Alex Tarkanian.  Vince longs to have a regular life, where he has a girl, pays his own way, can get to university (and far from his family) and passes his classes.  

Vince however, is not like other guys, and especially not like the rest of his family.  He is the only one of them who isn't in what Vince constantly refers to as 'the vending-machine business', which is run by his father, Anthony "Honest Abe" Luca.  Dad earns this nickname because he can be trusted to be square in all his business deals, even if the 'vending-machine business' is really a more dangerous one.  Vince is the only member of his family not involved in "The Life", which is a euphemism for The Mob.

That's right: Vince Luca is a Mob Prince, but unlike his cooking-happy mother or hot-tempered brother Tommy, Vince wants no part of the business.  He's a civilian and has made clear he intends to stay that way.  Vince is pretty much kept clear of things, and that includes getting some perks (he insists on paying for a Mazda with a cracked sunroof rather than take a more luxurious car, given the last time he did, he was pulled over for driving a hot Porsche).  However, he also realizes that all his food, clothes, and pocket money are provided through these means.

Vince is desperate to keep his family and his private life separate, but despite his best efforts things keep colliding, like when his one date with Angela O'Bannon is wrecked by finding Jimmy Rat stuffed in his Mazda.  Oddly, that freaks Angela out and it kind of kills the mood;  this is courtesy of Tommy, who used Vince's car and forgot about it (and that's despite Anthony Luca putting a trusted aide, Ray Francione, as unofficial guardian).  Vince likes his Uncle Ray, the only one of his various Uncles who doesn't think it strange that Vince wants no part of The Life.  

To make up for this debacle Tommy arranges for a date with Cece, a very beautiful woman Vince at first mistakes for Tommy's new girlfriend.  Well, she can be both Tommy and Vince's girl...for a few hours.  She's really a hooker Tommy hired to take Vince's virginity, and while Vince is intensely attracted, he's also horrified.  Later on, pushed by Alex, they go to a college party where Vince reencounters another classmate, Kendra Bightly, and to get rid of a guy Kendra kisses Vince.  Soon, they find an attraction (and head lice) that brings them together and begin dating.

Vince keeps this secret from the Family, and especially after he finds out that Kendra is the daughter of FBI Agent Bightly (whom Anthony calls Agent Bite-Me), who has bugged the Luca home.  Here Vince is, finding a girl he really, really likes and who likes him, and it has to be the Agent's daughter!  Complicating matters is Jimmy Rat and another low-level thug, Ed Mishkin, both of whom owe debts to the Lucas.  Of course, this means they are going to get whacked (or in Ed's case, he's going to whack some old aunt for the inheritance).  Vince doesn't want them dead (he has too many memories of other Uncles going to the house to get bullets removed or fingers cut off), so he agrees, just this once, to step in and try to get their financial houses in order.  Dad isn't too keen on this, but figures this is a good way to get his somewhat lackadaisical son motivated in something.

Unfortunately, Vince's well-meaning involvement causes him unexpected trouble.  It also doesn't help that his New Media class project, designing a web page where your grade is based on number of hits, also finds its way into The Life.  Something as innocuous as iluvmycat.usa becomes a big online hit thanks to the Meow Marketplace, a section of Vince's website where you can put cats for sale.  However, Vince is puzzled by the odd ads appearing, such as:

I'm selling my third-favorite cat, Lady Anne.  She's a real winner, pure gold. $200.
If you're looking for a prime minister of a cat, you've come to the right place.  Dynamico caught three mice last week.  Only $100.
I'm selling exactly two of my cats, Kensington and Scattered Showers.  You've never seen such a couple of movie stars.  They're number one! $200 for the pair.

The last two really confuse Vince.  Who refers to their cat as 'prime minister'?  How are two cats both "number one"?  It takes a long time for Vince to make the connection between Meow Marketplace and Tommy's sudden interest in the Internet.  On the Jimmy/Ed front, Vince finds that they are getting played, and that Honest Abe Luca is in on it.  This leads to a major falling out between them, a falling out that is healed after Vince finds who the mole in the family is.  This revelation is preceded by Vince's discovery that Mama Luca is more Livia Soprano than Carmela Corleone.   In the end though, Kendra and Vince are reunited (she broke up with Vince after thinking he was in The Life too as a loan shark), Jimmy and Ed manage to make enough to pay off everyone thanks to misinterpreting Vince's words about a major rainstorm, Vince and Alex remain friends, and Vince himself stays out of The Life...but won't get the Luca and Bightly families over for any cookouts anytime soon.

The Mafia has an odd hold over the American imagination.  It certainly does over my best friend/brother Gabe, who is passionate about all things gangster.  From The Godfather and Goodfellas to The Sopranos and even Mob Wives, La Cosa Nostra has been something that Americans have glamorized and mystified.  Son of the Mob is a more lighthearted take on it, with a unique vantage point of that of the clean son (think Michael Corleone before he went all evil).  Vince is not blind to the Luca 'vending machine business', but he also wants his life to be different.

This isn't to say Vince is particularly noble or upright.  In many ways, he's his father's son: able to give what he calls The Luca Stare to try to push others to do what he thinks needs to be done.  He also describes himself as being like the other men in his life: unable to speak on emotions, with grunts and sleeveless t-shirts being the extent of his 'feminine side'. 

However, he also wants to be different from his family.  He wants a life separate from The Life and dislikes it whenever he finds that The Family gets in the way of his own life.  We see this right at the beginning, where his date is ruined by having a low-level thug stuffed in the trunk.  We also see from this opening that Son of the Mob is meant to be light (if it were dark, Jimmy Rat would be dead, but here, he's just been roughed up a bit).  This dark humor does lighten up in unexpected ways.  Jimmy and Ed torch their places to collect insurance money, thinking this was all Vince's idea.  He told them that a major storm was heading, and they mistook this for him suggesting they take advantage of the storm to make it look like the lightning had caused fires to break out.  What Vince was really saying was that...there was a major rainstorm coming.

While it is highly exaggerated, Son of the Mob is a book I think kids will relate to in a roundabout way because at one point or another, every child wants to both be separate from his family to form his/her own identity and find that their parent's jobs do get in the way.  What parent hasn't at one point or another embarrassed their child, or not been able to be there because of business?

The characters are also relatable.  Vince in particular is a fine example of the first-person narrative.  He isn't eloquent but his voice is real in his acceptance of how his family is and in how he sees things.  His horror at Cece 'hitting' on him, his worry about not passing the New Media class, his terror at possibly becoming Homecoming King: while deliberately overdone, Korman makes Vince into a genuinely likeable fellow. 

Korman does the same for the other characters: the weasely Jimmy Rat, the surprisingly kind Ray, the frustrated best friend Alex.  Even someone we don't hear much gets both a good twist and some laughs.  On a date at a Mexican restaurant/karaoke bar, Vince is stunned to see Uncle Pampers, a big-time hit man.  He's even more stunned to see this big-time assassin casually walking up to the microphone and belt out some Hank Williams, Sr. (and more stunning, being very good at it, right down to the yodeling).  This is where Son of the Mob really excels: the mixing of character and situation, playing with our conventions about mobsters. 

Who knew a guy who whacks people for a living would be passionate about country music and karaoke? 

Korman has a well-crafted and tight story for the most part, injecting humor in the best places.  When the mole plays a tape of Mother Luca about to order a hit, it then gets interrupted by Kendra's voice singing If I Had a Hammer.  This ties in to what we learned earlier about Kendra: that her father no longer brought his work home after 'some evidence was accidentally destroyed' and that she had a habit of recording her own karaoke whenever the mood struck her in various tapes with little actual organization. 

There's something cinematic about Son of the Mob, where these sort of things could be seen in a movie (the major blowup between Anthony and Vince in the middle of the huge rainstorm is another).

If I were to say anything negative about Son of the Mob, is that I figured out Meow Marketplace was being used as a front for gambling long before Vince did.  Knowing his family like he does, and Tommy in particular, I wonder what took him so long. 

Son of the Mob was a fast, delightful read.  The situations may be dangerous, but are handled in a comical way.  The plot holds up extremely well and young readers especially will like the mix of the familiar with the outlandish.  Vince comes across as a genuine guy with problems young adults know (getting and keeping a girl) and don't (keeping two low-level thugs from getting whacked).  It proved so popular that Korman wrote a sequel: Son of the Mob: Hollywood Hustle.   On the whole, Son of the Mob is a book young adults and mob aficionados will enjoy for its humor, mix of good characters, situations, and logic. 

BRIEF REVIEW DISCUSSION

The Kirkus Review for Son of the Mob agrees with me on how well the humor is handled in the book.  "Maintaining the balance between situational humor and the real violence and ugliness of organized crime is no easy matter, but Korman pulls it off in fine manner, managing to create genuinely sympathetic characters in Vince’s family—people who love him and want the best for him, but who can at the same time call out a hit on someone as casually as ordering a pizza."  Korman does balance the genuine heart of the romance between Vince and Kendra with the humor of the 'vending-machine business' and all the trouble it causes the only civilian in the Luca family.  There is a lot of humor in the story, but also a genuine heart for these 'star-crossed lovers' reenacting their own Romeo & Juliet (I do so love Shakespeare). 

PROGRAMMING SUGGESTIONS

There are a couple of programs one could try.  A major point of Son of the Mob is that the Luca Family is in 'the vending-machine business'.  Why not offer a vending machine contest (or exhibit, because I wonder if kids still play vending machines)?  One might open a virtual or real 'Meow Marketplace', and I'd offer have a cat race (if cats do race, which I doubt).  Kendra and Uncle Pampers love to karaoke, so there's another opportunity to have a karaoke contest.  However, unlike the book, no food-throwing at the singers will be permitted. 




Gordon Korman
Born 1963

REFERENCES:

Book Review: Son of the Mob by Gordon Korman (2010, May).  Kirkus Reviews.  Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/gordon-korman/son-of-the-mob/