Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History

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Summary: Five-Finger Discount
Review: As a child, Helene Stapinski lived in a Jersey City apartment above the Majestic Tavern, a dive where her uncle Henry, the neighborhood bookie, ran numbers. Trying to stay a few steps ahead of the police but arrested three times, Henry lived in fear that his phone lines were tapped. And Helene counted him as one of her most upstanding family members. In a voice so true & unique that you know you're in the hands of a born writer, Stapinski recounts the epic drama of growing up surrounded by family members who lived & died by the maxim that it's far better to take than to pay. The dinner Stapinski's mother put on the table was swiped from the cold-storage company where her father worked. The toothpaste they used was lifted by a friend who worked in the Colgate factory. The books on their shelves were smuggled out of a book-binding company in Aunt Maryann's oversized girdle. And there were darker deeds in the family past--a cousin gunned down by police, a great-grandmother murdered by her husband. The Mafia, the Catholic Church, toxic waste, the DMV, & corrupt local officials are all part of this sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking family history, a story as polluted as the Jersey City air. Stapinski tells an extraordinary tale that, unlike the swag of her childhood, is her very own.
Forgeddabout HBO's rag-tag team of make believe gangsters - and meet the real thing. In FIVE-FINGER DISCOUNT: A Crooked Family History, author Helene Stapinski recounts her Jersey City childhood where her family's dinner was swiped from the cold storage company where her father worked, her teeth were brushed with toothpaste filched from the Colgate factory and her books were pinched from the public library where her grandfather worked as a security guard. Outrageous, hilarious, and at times a little sad, this is a family memoir like none you?ve ever read.

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Summary: A Rich Tale, Brimming With Life
Review: Behind the myriad tales of criminals, petty and not so petty, in Helene Stapinski's book, "Five-Finger Discount," is a precocious girl who grows up with a keen awareness of family and of place.

Even on its surface, the book has much to offer - it is rich in interesting Jersey City lore, filled with eye-popping accounts of political corruption that ensnares even ordinary citizens.

Revealing ancedotes reverberate throughout the story: the rise and fall of "playing the number," the wiley ways of Aunt Katie, the sour fate that awaits those who try to escape Jersey City's grip. Ms. Stapinski wraps humor around moments both tragic and sweet, ending paragraphs with a punch:

"My father, never a jealous man, was so proud of his beautiful girl: This was his dance, and that was Jersey City's future mayor dancing with his girl. He sipped his Scotch and flashed a wide, white smile. It was 1949, so he hadn't yet lost his front teeth."

But the glue that holds together this refreshingly realistic and un-selfconscious work about growing up Catholic, working-class and all too aware of humanity's foibles, is a narrator with a highly developed sense of family and place. Despite their flaws, Ms. Stapinski's rogue's gallery of cousins, aunts, and uncles are for the most part, a true family. They know the details of each other's lives, they visit each other often, they help each other out, they understand each other, they get angry, they get hurt, they forgive. And Ms. Stapinski relates all their stories with care.

Ms. Stapinski's voice is strong and clear - she paints a picture of a forlorn, yet often beguiling, place. It and she are often lost in time, hindered by the small-town mentality of decent folks. In this place, blacks and Italians fight and gays are unheard of, young girls move into bachelorette apartments, children are tormented by nuns, men visit saloons after work, funerals are big events, and the local movie theater needs saving.

A good writer fills the pages with life so powerful and funny, that no matter how difficult it is, one can't help but want to live it. By that standard, Ms. Stapinski is a good writer indeed.

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Summary: What a family !
Review: Helene Stapinskis story of her Polish immigrant family is a real eye-opener into the way of life of a New Jersey family of crooks. Tony Soprano eat your heart out ! Almost without exception, the males in the family are either in jail, going to jail or coming out of jail and are into every lurk and perk possible.The boys in the extended family have no hope from childhood, growing up in a depressed neighbourhood amongst ugliness in the old buildings and deserted factories. Getting food and "swag that fell off the back of trucks"is a way of life and conditions them to thinking that stealing is ok if you're not caught, right from childhood. I found it an interesting read as it exposed a world totally foreign to me and almost nonchalantly recorded the chicanery of the local political systems. It could have been a very depressing story except for the way that she describes the strength and weaknesses of the women of the family who hold the whole structure together.

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Summary: An enjoyable, non-taxing read
Review: I am not a huge fan of memoirs but I found Helene Stapinski's family history to be an interesting and well-organized read of life in Jersey City, as she and her family lived it. I am surprised at other reviewiers taking offense to her descriptions of her hometown and her views - while I found Ms. Stapinski to be opinionated, I also found that she did an excellent job of maintaining an emotional distance from the "story". I enjoyed peering into this life, with its stolen luxuries and potential for destruction - I don't imagine that this memoir is much different than what many others remember, or are experiencing now. While the book is not very cheerful, it is an honest and poignant view of a memorable childhood. I recommend Five Finger Discout for both its historical interest and its unique ability to draw the reader into the world of petty crime and abuse and for its understanding of family dynamics and loyalties. Not everyone grew up in Mayberry!

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Summary: It's easy to blame the City for your own problems
Review: I am on page 19 and I simply had to quit. Ms. Stapinski was lucky to know some interesting characters, however, all these interesting people leave you emotionless and empty. The idiosyncrasies of her relatives are fed to the reader peace meal, and there is no coherence to her story. A far cry from the likes of Frank McCourt. Shame on you Newark Sunday Star-Ledger to compare the two as equal.

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Summary: All too true
Review: I grew up in the Greenville section of Jersey City in the 60's and 70's and I think that Helene Stapinski's depiction of Jersey City is spot-on. Not only was it a dreary and dirty place to live, it was also filled with some of the most narrow-minded, intolerant and racist people I ever had the misfortune of knowing. I attended Catholic grade school and high school there, but after graduation I moved away, and my family did the same a few years later. Despite assurances by some of my relatives that the place had changed, I went back to visit a friend who teaches at St. Peter's College and it was still the same Jersey City, complete with the same tight-faced people riding the #10 bus down Kennedy Blvd. Stapinski's book may not be popular among the locals, but her depiction is true.

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Summary: ANOTHER BETTER JERSEY CITY
Review: In "Five Finger Discount," Helene Stapinski has given us a memoir of both a town and a family. Jersey City, NJ, has long been considered the most corrupt town in the US, and from Ms. Stapinski's history of crime and politics the town deserved its appellation. It also seems her family deserved its place in the town, with a history of petty crime that started with the grandparents and ran its way through the generations. Although "Five Finger Discount," is localized, I think Ms. Stapinski has written about many Northeastern, immigrant, industrial communities. I grew up in Erie, PA, and her stories were not foreign to me. The numbers, the goods fallen off the backs of trucks, the crooked politicians and police figured enough in my life, and in the life of the Polish ghetto we finally escaped that "Five Finger Discount," could have easily been about Erie, if not in kin, at least in kind.

The one shortfall of this memoir occurs within the memoir of place. For a non-Jersey-ite I felt the extent of the history of Jersey City slowed the narrative. I could have done with less. For folks who live in the region, however, I'm sure the history will prove fascinating. Whenever my interest would lag, though, "Five Finger Discount," would return to the family. The strength of the memoir lies in the melding of both, but for me the family stories proved more rewarding than the sociology.

I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in a good family story mixed with true crime.

Rating:
Summary: The Town and the Family
Review: In "Five Finger Discount," Helene Stapinski has given us a memoir of both a town and a family. Jersey City, NJ, has long been considered the most corrupt town in the US, and from Ms. Stapinski's history of crime and politics the town deserved its appellation. It also seems her family deserved its place in the town, with a history of petty crime that started with the grandparents and ran its way through the generations. Although "Five Finger Discount," is localized, I think Ms. Stapinski has written about many Northeastern, immigrant, industrial communities. I grew up in Erie, PA, and her stories were not foreign to me. The numbers, the goods fallen off the backs of trucks, the crooked politicians and police figured enough in my life, and in the life of the Polish ghetto we finally escaped that "Five Finger Discount," could have easily been about Erie, if not in kin, at least in kind.

The one shortfall of this memoir occurs within the memoir of place. For a non-Jersey-ite I felt the extent of the history of Jersey City slowed the narrative. I could have done with less. For folks who live in the region, however, I'm sure the history will prove fascinating. Whenever my interest would lag, though, "Five Finger Discount," would return to the family. The strength of the memoir lies in the melding of both, but for me the family stories proved more rewarding than the sociology.

I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in a good family story mixed with true crime.

Rating:
Summary: All too true
Review: Stapinski escaped a Polish-Italian American legacy of petty crime and violence when she fled to college in Manhattan and a career in journalism, but she never entirely escaped her roots in Jersey City, a smelly city in the age of urban deterioration. This salty account of her growing up years across the river from New York joins the ranks of other memoir, coming-of-age tales that are so popular right now.