Malavita by Tonino Benacquista

First published in France in 2004; published in translation by Penguin Books on June 25, 2013

If, like most viewers, you were wondering "what comes next?" after the screen turned black at the end of the last Sopranos episode, you can imagine Malavita as the Sopranos sequel. Unfortunate events forced the Blake family to leave Newark, and then to leave Paris, and then to leave the Cote d'Azur before making their way to a village in Normandy. Along the way they were joined by an Australian Cattle Dog named Malavita. The cause of their journey is not revealed until chapter two, but the reader knows that it has something to do with Fred, "in the days when he was still called Giovanni." Having come into possession of a typewriter, Fred is posing as a writer, a cover story that disturbs both his wife Maggie (who regards her husband as barely literate) and, after Fred decides he should write his memoir, his exasperated FBI handler. The writing exposes Fred's checkered past to the reader while dredging up a sense of vulnerability that Fred has rarely experienced.

The Blakes are a family of sociopaths. Young Warren's ambition is to become a Godfather while his aptly named sister Belle guards her untouchable beauty with violent vigor. Maggie might burn down your house as retribution for a perceived insult, but her French neighbors revere her as a volunteer for charitable causes. Fred is widely regarded as a worldly pack leader, a community protector. Near the story's midpoint, Tonino Benacquista treats the reader to a departure, a series of short stories connected by a school newspaper. The circuitous route traveled by the newspaper turns out to be integral to the plot, but the stories are enjoyable standing alone.

Benacquista keeps the tone light, making it possible for the tolerant reader to like the Blakes, just as viewers liked Tony Soprano while cringing at his behavior. Fred is who he is, and Benacquista helps the reader understand why. Benacquista's approach to storytelling makes it possible to step back from the criminal nature of the Blake family and to look beneath the surface to find traits and circumstances with which the reader can identify. Crime families, after all, have the same domestic issues as other families. In fact, we understand Fred better than Fred -- a man baffled by honest people who "trust in a world that had to be obeyed" -- understands us. And even if we can't identify with Belle's narcissism or Warren's lust for power or Fred's indifference to his family (although he cares about his dog, so how bad can he be?), those characteristics (exaggerated for comedic effect but recognizable in people we know) can make us laugh.

Malavita exposes the hypocrisy of people who make a point of holding themselves out as morally superior to (or holier than) the wayward Blakes. Which is worse, the novel implicitly asks: the Mafia kingpin or the factory owners who poison the village water supply? French pomposity, Italian appetites, and American arrogance all add humor to Benacquista's story. By the novel's end, Fred is redeemed in a small but meaningful way. Malavita doesn't have the depth of character that The Sopranos developed, but it tells a funny, fast-moving story without wasting words. That made it worthwhile for me.

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