Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History

Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History

Stapinski, Helene

Paperback

Biographies General

ISBN10: 0375758704
ISBN13: 9780375758706
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: Mar 12 2002
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.45
Height: 0.61 Width: 5.22 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
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 Discount

By turns hilarious and alarming, [Helene Stapinski's] 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 Times

It's 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 Sun

In 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 Observer

What [Frank] McCourt did for Limerick, Ireland, Helene Stapinski does for Jersey City.--The Star-Ledger

Hugely entertaining.--The Sunday Times (London)

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