Prizzi's Family

Prizzi's Family is a novel by Richard Condon published in 1986. It is the second of four novels featuring the Prizzis, a powerful family of Mafiosi in New York City. In all four novels the main protagonist is a top member of the family named Charlie Partanna. It is a prequel to the very successful Prizzi's Honor of 1982, which was also adapted into an award-winning film.

Plot summary

Mardell La Tour is actually Grace Willand Crowell, daughter of an Assistant Sec. of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, an immensely wealthy family that lives in a Federalist House in Georgetown.

Vincent Prizzi, son of Don and Boss: Vincent conspired with his own ignorance. He was a perpetually baffled man who chewed on pieces of himself and then spat them out at the world.

Condon's style

While making love: "It was like being locked in a mailbag with eleven boa constrictors." page 68

"The way he did this was whisper into Vincent's ear in Sicilian, then Vincent spoke it into the microphone in Brooklynese, dumping the words out of the depths of his stomach the way a piled wheelbarrow is emptied by upending it." page 59

Franklin Heller is the mayor of New York. page 158

Dr. Abraham Weiler is the best orthopedic surgeon in the Northwest, page 230

Reception

Publisher's Weekly https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-399-13210-0

for Prizzi's Glory: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1988-10-24-8802100696-story.html

External links

• New York Times review October 29, 1986, Section C, Page 24

Not a review, but an interview with Condon: https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/29/books/condon-s-prizzis-turn-into-a-series.html?searchResultPosition=1

Review by Jimmy Breslin: https://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/28/books/charley-and-maerose-the-early-years.html?searchResultPosition=4

Sept. 28, 1986, Section 7, Page 13 of the National edition with the headline: CHARLEY AND MAEROSE: THE EARLY YEARS.