The Gold Coast
by Nelson DeMille
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Book Summary Information
Author: Nelson DeMilleEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1997-04-01
ISBN: 0446673218
Number of pages: 707
Publisher: Warner Books
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780446673211
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Gold Coast
Book Review: Odd, a bit of a change of pace for DeMille
Summary: 4 Stars
All the way back to "By the Rivers of Babylon", I've been something of a fan of Nelson DeMille. I liked some of his books (the Viet Nam one, notably) more than others (The General's Daughter), but I've generally been a fan. At one point, some years ago, I got a copy of The Gold Coast. I read about 50 pages, realized it was going to be about the Mob, and put it aside. I have this thing about the Mafia: I generally don't like to read about them, don't enjoy that sort of book much. Yes, I never even saw any of the Godfather movies. Don't really care about thugs, and have a real problem with a story where they're the protagonists.
So a few months ago, my wife bought a stack of used paperbacks for her mom, and one of them was The Gold Coast. When Nadine got through with it, I took a shot at it. This edition has a forward written by the author some years later, where he makes the point (which I more or less missed, when I read it the first time) that this is supposed to be an updating of The Great Gatsby. It's about triple the length, and is less disciplined in terms of construction, but it's definitely the same story. It's sort of like Cold Mountain, in the sense that if you didn't understand that Cold Mountain was an updating of Homer's Oddyssey, the author has one of the characters read Homer's Oddyssey to another, so you get the not very subtle hint. Here the main character tells you repeatedly about how this house or that town are supposed to be settings from the original Fitzgerald novel, so that you get the rather strong hint that this is a remix of the old story.
DeMille tells an interesting, if somewhat typical story. Think Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? combined with the Godfather. The main character, John Sutter, is an estate planning lawyer, the sort of guy who never enters a courtroom if he can help it, and who has clients who are immensely wealthy, filthy with "old" money. His family are not particularly wealthy, but they've lived on the "Gold Coast" for several hundred years. This is an area of the Northern coast of Long Island, immediately adjacent to New York City, where the millionaires used to have one mansion after another, and the parties ran all week. The region's fallen on hard times, and now half the mansions have been either torn down or abandoned because the tax burden is too high, and the other half are private schools, used by foundations, or corporate retreats. Sutter lives with his wife in the guest house of his wife's family's estate, which they've abandoned to the city and state to avoid paying taxes.
So John gets a new neighbor, moving into the mansion down the road. Frank Bellarosa is the boss of a large Mafia family in New York City, and he's tired of the rat race, so he wants to move to the country, where things are quiet and he can have some peace. But the FBI follows him, so of course things are complicated. At the same time, he meets Sutter, and the two men more or less form a friendship. John's wife, from a wealthier, but newer to the area, family, decides she likes the neighborhood mobster, and soon they're all socializing. Eventually, for a brief minute, Sutter acts as Frank's lawyer, in a court hearing.
This is more or less a good book. DeMille isn't a great prosesmith; what he writes reads easily, but won't stay with you past your bedtime. That aside, the idea of the book, the thought that there are still parts of America which are white bastions, where a mobster isn't welcome to dinner...well, he is a thug, so in some ways it's comforting. The interplay between the characters is interesting, and at times mildly funny. Bellarosa buys this large mansion, and then of course tries to figure out what all the rooms are for. Sutter's wife winds up explaining some of them to him, amused and slightly condescending, and the whole scene is fun.
I generally enjoyed this book. Not so sure how it fits in with the rest of his books, but it's definitely worth reading.
Summary of The Gold Coast
Welcome to the fabled Gold Coast, that stretch on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America. Here two men are destined for an explosive collision: John Sutter, Wall Street lawyer, holding fast to a fading aristocratic legacy; and Frank Bellarosa, the Mafia don who seizes his piece of the staid and unprepared Gold Coast like a latter-day barbarian chief and draws Sutter and his regally beautiful wife, Susan, into his violent world. Told from Sutter's sardonic and often hilarious point of view, and laced with sexual passion and suspense, THE GOLD COAST is Nelson DeMille's captivating story of friendship and seduction, love and betrayal.Literature & Fiction Books
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