The Bookmaker: A Memoir of Money, Luck, and Family from the Utopian Outskirts of New York City

Michael J. Agovino
HaperCollins (2008)
ISBN 9780061151392
Reviewed by Nicole Bonia for Reader Views (12/08)

 

Michael Agovino grew up in Co-op City, once called the biggest housing project in the country, in a melting pot of New York City ethnicities where his Italian American family is in the minority.  The bookmaker of the title is his ever-enterprising father who makes extra money by being the man that small-time gamblers can make bets with on the side, and whose up and down fortunes lead the family on a cyclical series of up and downs; poverty and eviction notices one minute and leisurely month-long trips through European hotspots the next.

All his mother has ever wanted to do is to have a house and to make a nice home for her husband and children, but she is constantly undermined by the husband who not only takes bets for other people, but also goes on to squander the earnings by making bets himself.  The children are frequently caught between their parents competing thoughts, goals and desires.

“The Bookmaker” is an ambitious book, spanning four decades and reading more like a piece of investigative journalism than the memoir that it is.  Rich in detail, it explores the ethnic identities of not only Italian-Americans in the neighborhood in East Harlem in the 60s, but also explores the dynamics of a racially and ethnically diverse housing project in the Bronx, as Jewish, Puerto Rican, African American and Italian American families all lived together.

Initially the intricate structure of the beginning of the story can make it a difficult one to follow. There are a wealth of people, jobs and family members to keep track of as the history of Agovino’s family is explored.  The book starts off when his father has to flee the city as a young man because of money that he owes to various wise-guys around town.  He goes to D.C. where he struggles to find his footing, and then when he has been away long enough that his debt is sufficiently resolved, he is called back to New York where the story picks up the vein of the Agovino’s grandparents and the extended families that shaped the lives of his parent. The stories are rich in observation and humor, and written in the spirit and the vernacular of the neighbor.  Questions are asked and answered within sentences, but it can take a minute to attribute this call and response to the correct family member’s point of view.  At this point the flavor of the storytelling was what kept me going on because I wasn’t always sure which stories belonged to whom.

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