Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History

ISBN: 0375758704

Author: Stapinski, Helene

Condition: New

Now a PBS documentary, this astonishing memoir of growing up in rough-and-tumble Jersey City will steal your heart (People)With deadpan humor and obvious affection, Five-Finger Discount recounts the story of an unforgettable New Jersey family of swindlers, bookies, embezzlers, and mobster-wannabes. In the memoir Mary Karr calls a page-turner, Helene Stapinski ingeniously weaves the checkered history of her hometown of Jersey City-a place known for its political corruption and industrial blight-with the tales that have swirled around her relatives for decades. Navigating a childhood of toxic waste and tough love, Stapinski tells an extraordinary tale at once heartbreaking and hysterically funny.Praise for Five-Finger DiscountBy turns hilarious and alarming, [Helene Stapinskis] book reads on the surface like something by Damon Runyon and Elmore Leonard, with a dark undertow of real-life pain and disillusion.-Michiko Kakutani, The New York TimesIts a brilliant book, a darling book. It is the blessedly modest chronicle of a magical consciousness that seems to have been born pulling diamonds out of the muck, hearing angels voices in the fiercest thunder. . . . I adored every word of this wondrous book. Get it. Read it.-Michael Pakenham, The Baltimore SunIn the tradition of . . . Rita Mae Brown and Amy Tan, Ms. Stapinski is an exciting writer, unabashedly candid, and at the same time unashamedly self-contained. Five-Finger Discount is a must-read.-Victoria Gotti, The New York ObserverWhat [Frank] McCourt did for Limerick, Ireland, Helene Stapinski does for Jersey City.-The Star-LedgerHugely entertaining.-The Sunday Times (London)