Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History

How easy can it be to write a memoir about your childhood when one of your earliest memories is of your grandfather's attempt to murder you and your family? How pleasant can it be to write about your childhood home given its now ubiqitous reputation as America's citadel of crime and corruption? The enormous moral and social courage alone Helene Stapinski had to muster to describe her life in Jersey City in the last third of the twentieth century make her memoir "Five-Finger Discount" worth reading. At times maddening, frightful, depressing and hilarious, the memoir magically brings us into the Stapinski family -- with its heritage of crime, violence and family abuse -- while simultaneously providing us with an enormously readable history of Jersey City, a place so corrupt, so venal, so thoroughly crooked, that its moral taint seems to rub off, along with sundry industrial residues, on its population. Indeed, theft is so common, that swag, as it is called, is not even considered wrong; it is simply a way of life. Thus, Stapinski's subtitle, "A Crooked Family History" is appropriately accurate, both a description of of her own personal circumstances, but as that of the larger political community, whose criminality looms everywhere.As a child, Helene never considers her family anything but normal. Living upstairs from a neighborhood bar, she accepts the arrest of her abusive grandfather Beansie (a nickname derived from the fact that he stole some beans from a truck earlier in his life) as normal, the most recent of "a string of family crimes and tragedies, which I thought most people experienced on a regular basis." The diminuitive Beansie, nothing more than a small-time bully and crook, becomes the central lens through which Stapinski examines her family history. Not an intellectual crook, like some of her other relatives, Beansie "was more of a freelance criminal, committing crimes whenever the opportunity arose." An abusive husband and father, Beansie's welcomed disappearances into jail provide the family with its only opportunity for coherence and sanity. As she grows, Helene prefers attending well-fed funerals than going through the Holland Tunnel to New York City to play with new toys in the showrooms of Macys. She relishes watching the numbers game, which to her was a community activity, and rejoices at the number of people who "hit" on her birthday. She learns from "my mother to stand up for myself and to dislike careless and unfair people. There were quite a few of them living in Jersey City." This linkage with Jersey City and family identity emerges as one of the strengths of the memoir.Stapinski's portrait of Jersey City will stagger the uninitiated. Literally staring at the backside of the Statue of Liberty, this city, pillored as once and always "ugly," was the debarcation spot for millions of immigrants who passed through Ellis Island. Jersey City, howeve, became a place "settled for," inhabited by settlers "of a di

Behind the myriad tales of criminals, petty and not so petty, in Helene Stapinski's book, "Five-Finger Discount," is a precocious girl who grows up with a keen awareness of family and of place.Even on its surface, the book has much to offer - it is rich in interesting Jersey City lore, filled with eye-popping accounts of political corruption that ensnares even ordinary citizens.Revealing ancedotes reverberate throughout the story: the rise and fall of "playing the number," the wiley ways of Aunt Katie, the sour fate that awaits those who try to escape Jersey City's grip. Ms. Stapinski wraps humor around moments both tragic and sweet, ending paragraphs with a punch:"My father, never a jealous man, was so proud of his beautiful girl: This was his dance, and that was Jersey City's future mayor dancing with his girl. He sipped his Scotch and flashed a wide, white smile. It was 1949, so he hadn't yet lost his front teeth."But the glue that holds together this refreshingly realistic and un-selfconscious work about growing up Catholic, working-class and all too aware of humanity's foibles, is a narrator with a highly developed sense of family and place. Despite their flaws, Ms. Stapinski's rogue's gallery of cousins, aunts, and uncles are for the most part, a true family. They know the details of each other's lives, they visit each other often, they help each other out, they understand each other, they get angry, they get hurt, they forgive. And Ms. Stapinski relates all their stories with care.Ms. Stapinski's voice is strong and clear - she paints a picture of a forlorn, yet often beguiling, place. It and she are often lost in time, hindered by the small-town mentality of decent folks. In this place, blacks and Italians fight and gays are unheard of, young girls move into bachelorette apartments, children are tormented by nuns, men visit saloons after work, funerals are big events, and the local movie theater needs saving.A good writer fills the pages with life so powerful and funny, that no matter how difficult it is, one can't help but want to live it. By that standard, Ms. Stapinski is a good writer indeed.

Stapinski deftly weaves the story of her own family's misdeeds with the culture of corruption that has pervaded Jersey City. From the lovable aunt who smuggled leather-bound books in her girdle to the psychotic grandfather who tried to kill the entire family, Stapinski paints a loving portrait of the people who live in the shadow of glittering New York City, the people the Statue of Liberty has turned her back on.

I have known Helene since the day she was born. My brother and I grew up with her older sister and brother....our Moms and Dads worked together...we were "family". I remember listening to the grownups telling these "stories". To read them in print....I remember! I was born in Jersey City in 1959...moved out the end of 70. For the most...for me...it was a great town. But...those were my years, not Helene's.

Five Finger Discount is a great read. The author clearly speaks from the heart and knows what she is talking about. She gave me access to a world I had never even heard of before reading her book. I highly recommend this book!