Brotherly Love

by Pete Dexter

Book Overview

A new novel from the author of the National Book Award-winning Paris Trout. In the City of Brotherly Love, 8-year-old Peter Flood is left orphaned when his powerful father, a Philadelphia union boss with mob connections, dies in a car crash. Peter and his cousin Michael grow up in violent circumstances, and we look on in horror and fascination as both young men are sucked into a circle of betrayal and retribution.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394585739
• ISBN13: 9780394585734
• Release Date: September 1991
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 274 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A Dark, Brooding and Lyrical Novel

This book is dark and brooding. It starts out with a child watching his sister die in a car accident. The accident sets in motion his family's demise. Peter is the surviving child. His father, an organized crime leader, seeks vengeance against the driver of the car that killed his daughter despite the Capo's warning of hand's off. Peter's mother sinks into a depression and leaves her son and husband. Peter is raised by his uncle, a sociopathic criminal. Peter's cousin Mike, a mirror-image of Peter's uncle is the crime boss. Peter quietly resigns himself to joining the crime organization. Peter's life consists of following the rules of the organization while quietly seeking ways to punish himself. He hopes to ultimately find redemption for his life and ways. He is able to do this through an odd friendship that he forges with the owner of a boxing club. This book is dark, haunting and lyrical - an unusual combination. I highly recommend it.

Bleak Noir

I bought Brotherly Love, a discounted, yet signed, copy from the remaindered section of the bookstore where I used to work. At the time I was enamored by Pete Dexter, whose books Train and Paris Trout I had recently read. Both of those books are spare and menacing, at times brutally violent, but done in a masterful way. Brotherly Love is like those books, but to call the book spare is an understatement. Dexter takes his time - most of the book, really - fleshing out the main characters, cousins Peter and Michael Flood from a Philadelphia gangster family. As the plot slowly develops - or comes to a boil, one might say - it becomes clear that Peter wants out. But of course, Michael and his band of hoods keep dragging him back in. In Brotherly Love, Dexter doesn't quite plumb the emotional depths of his characters as he does so effectively in Paris Trout and Train, and the reader is left with a book that feels empty and characters that feel doomed from page one.

a terrible beauty is born(e)

since i've got no more lehane in the cupboard, i've embarked upon his stated predecessors and influences: william kennedy, richard price and dexter, who poses on the back of this hardback with boxing gloves hanging in the background -- and he looks like a boxer. aptly-named book, for the story begins with the death of the protagonist's toddler sister while peter's on watch. the child's death destroys peter's family: his mother drops into neurathesia, and his dad's so consumed by revenge that he writes off his future, and his son's, by going against the italian don's wishes and wreaking obvious revenge. peter's father is betrayed, perhaps by his own brother, and his house is invaded by this uncle he can never trust, his wife and his son michael, who's cowardly, self-centered and infatuated with violence, the type who'd torture an old made man and then truss him up to the water heater, to be found by his wife. so much darkness here -- struggles between the irish and italian mobsters, filial struggles and betrayals of brothers, struggles between men and women -- and some strange beauty, for peter jumps. he jumps out of windows, off rooftops; he jumps after his sister's death, and he jumps when the italians come to finish the job he started when he offed michael. and it's that final jump that finally offers him forgiveness for the sin of distraction and a betrayal-that-wasn't, for he's been consumed by his sister's death, and its repercussions. tough and compelling, with moments of lyricism. my only complaint was that these lyrical strains sometimes jarred against dexter's hemingway-esque tendencies. plus, the women weren't drawn particularly well. but in general, this is a good good book.

Terrific

The only thing that mars this novel is some really bad writing when it comes to the women characters. Other than that, this is close to being a great book.

A great read...beutiful prose with the very good story...

Pete Dexter is one of my favorite authors, great books, all of them