Title: Okay, but
Review: just old stories in a new wrapper. Invites comparison to Mario Puzo: Breslin's is an Irish take on the human condition-- sarcasm like Puck, "what fools these mortals be;" Puzo does grand opera--Italian melodrama of the human condition, waste and loss. Both are narrative, but Puzo's characters are rounder; neither is dramatic.Breslin is fun when he writes about those who connive against interest. But characters here are thin; interactions between lovers are haptic--flat AND thin, like cartoons. His gift is tapping memory for an image, a smell, a habit; and making just-in-time connections--gangster trading cards undoing the mob. But zip in his prose has gone missing. Maybe New York has changed for him, too, and his point, that the world of the mob was its own undoing, applies to him. The Gotham he loved is gone, and he mourns like Damon Runyon.
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