This reading group guide for Lowdown includes discussion questions and ideas for enhancing your book club discussion. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
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How did it all begin?
A friend mentioned that he’d read in the newspaper that some New York Mafiosi were going to get out of prison soon, after being incarcerated for upwards of twenty years… and that got me thinking. What would it be like to be back on the streets of Brooklyn, in the city you call home but have not seen since 1991? What would it be like to have your life, and the woman you love, ripped away from you? And could you ever forgive the people who put you behind bars for a quarter century? As I started imagining the person, I also started thinking about his star-crossed lover. What’s it like to be married to the mob? What if you are smarter and more competent than your violent, criminal husband? And what if you want out, because you meet someone special, a soul mate, and fall in love? There were, from the start, a lot of threads — love and loss, freedom and liberty, the meaning of forgiveness, the effects of a criminal life and an incarcerated life, the slippery meaning of home, and, finally, the enduring power of love.
I sat down a few days later and wrote what would become the first paragraph of Lowdown…
The first seven years you’re in the can, all you can think about is revenge. Kill the cocksucker who put you there. The next seven years you crave freedom and things you remember from before—a walk on a beach, Russian hooker, steak dinner, queen-size bed, sunlight. You want to get laid more than you want to get even. After that you’re not so sure. You know you want to be on the other side, but you don’t trust your memories. People have died, gone to prison, disappeared. Places you remember have closed down. Freedom is just a dream, something you imagine often but incompletely. Part of you is scared of it. Prison has become your life. You may hate it, but it’s home. You’re not even sure if you hate it anymore. That’s what twenty-five years in the calendar shop does to you.
How did you research the book?
I’m a huge fan of Mafia and gangster novels, movies and TV shows, so I’d done a lot of easy screen and reading research before I wrote a single word.
Then, I needed to dig deeper, and turned to some terrific source materials, including Mafia Prince by Phil Leonetti; Five Families by Selwyn Raab; Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi; Surviving the Mob by Dennis N. Griffin and Andrew DiDonato. I read newspaper articles and transcripts of Mafia trials in the US, as well as a lot of articles about the Sicilian Mafia, Maxi trials and ’Ndrangheta Mafia. Finally, I researched migrants to Italy, US criminal law, and had to do a lot of digging to get historical context right. For Italian words and phrases as well as legal insight I was lucky to have friends who could guide me. Thank you Lara and Jessica.
Perhaps the best part of research was visiting Sicily, which I did on two separate occasions.
What was the most difficult part about writing the book?
Writing the prison sections was painful, grueling work. I had to get inside a character who is arrested, sentenced, and goes to prison knowing that he’s been sentenced to a long term, and then imagine what it would be like after five, ten, or twenty years incarceration.
Topics and Questions
1. Milena and Jimmy meet early in the novel at group dinner in a restaurant in Manhattan. The year is 1984. Milena’s first impression is that Jimmy is a lot quieter than the Ruggiero made-men her husband hangs out with. Is there another point in the novel, much earlier, when they may have met or at least passed each other on the streets of Brooklyn? If Milena had met Jimmy when they were both teenagers what do you think her impression of him would have been?
2. What draws Milena to Jimmy? And Jimmy to Milena? How are they similar? Do they fall in love easily, or do they fight the mutual attraction?
3. One of the themes of the novel is forgiveness. Before Jimmy is released from prison the priest speaks about compassion, tells him forgiveness is a journey, and quotes The Bible: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” Does Jimmy ultimately forgive? What are his thoughts on forgiveness – how and whom one has to forgive? Do you agree?
4. Luck and fate play important roles throughout the novel and have particular significance for Jimmy, Milena and Vincent? How does luck shape each of their lives? Good luck and bad luck?
5. Both Jimmy and Milena think about the meaning of home. How does Jimmy feel about Brooklyn when he returns after 25 years? Where does Milena feel most at home at that time?
6. There is some debate about the novel’s ending. Where do you think Jimmy and Milena end up?
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