Fic­tion

Fun­ny Boys

War­ren Adler
  • Review
By – January 27, 2012
Mick­ey Fine, the nar­ra­tor and hero of this sto­ry, is a tum­ler, an enter­tain­er at a Catskills hotel, dur­ing its hey­day. Gorlicks’s is an upstate hotel with a twist, host­ing Jew­ish Mafia fam­i­lies and serv­ing as a meet­ing place for the top ech­e­lon in the orga­ni­za­tion. The tum­ler must keep the wives hap­py and busy with activ­i­ties while not get­ting too involved per­son­al­ly. Mick­ey falls for Mutzie Fed­er, a for­mer good girl who became the girl­friend of one of the big gang­sters and that’s when the trou­ble begins. The descrip­tion of how the hotel is run is very believ­able and the typ­i­cal humor­ous ban­ter enter­tain­ing. The char­ac­ters speak exag­ger­at­ed Brook­lyn-ese through­out and the dia­logue is slight­ly repet­i­tive, but I enjoyed read­ing about this peri­od. There is some graph­ic vio­lence and a love sto­ry with a few glitch­es before the hap­py end­ing. I rec­om­mend this book as a quick and fun read.
Miri­am Brad­man Abra­hams is a Cuban-born, Brook­lyn-raised, Long Island-resid­ing mom. She is Hadas­sah Nas­sau’s One Region One Book chair­la­dy, a free­lance essay­ist, and a cer­ti­fied yoga instruc­tor who has loved review­ing books for the JBC for the past ten years.

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