The Family: A Novel (Movie Tie-In), previously published as Malavita

Written by Tonino Benacquista

Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini

The internationally bestselling novel originally published as Malavita-now the major motion picture The Family, starring Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Tommy Lee Jones, directed by Luc Besson, and produced by Martin Scorsese

The Blakes are newcomers to a small town in Normandy. Fred is a historian researching the Allied landings, Maggie enjoys charity work, and their kids are looking forward to meeting other teenagers at the local lycée. Or so it seems.

In fact, Fred is really Giovanni Manzoni, an ex-goodfella turned stool pigeon who's been relocated from New Jersey to France by the FBI's witness protection program. He's got a two-million-dollar bounty on his head, but he and his family can't help attracting attention (imagine the Sopranos in Normandy). And when imprisoned mobster Don Mimino gets wind of their location, it's Mafia mayhem à la Josh Bazell's Beat the Reaper, or like The Godfather as if written by Carl Hiaasen. Because while you can take the man out of the Mafia, you can't take the Mafia out of the man.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio
• Release date: Jun 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781101619841

Reviews for The Family

[bsquaredinoz · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The blurb on the cover of Badfellas asks readers to imagine that the FBI’s witness protection programme has moved the Soprano family to Normandy. Having only ever watched three-quarters of an episode of the tv show that everyone but me loves I couldn’t quite manage that but I got the general idea. Giovanni Manzoni was a major Mafia boss who snitched on just about everyone in his organisation, ensuring many of them would be incarcerated for decades. What’s left of the Mafia are determined to kill him (and if honour isn’t reason enough there’s a $20million reward on offer) and the FBI is just as determined to keep him alive so that others will be tempted to become snitches. Manzoni and his family have been moved several times for their protection and as this book opens they are now known as the Blake family and are settling in the small town of Cholong-sur-Avre in France.

Given I generally avoid books and movies featuring mafia/organised crime as a central plot element I’m sure I missed loads of references to other works on this theme though even I picked up a few. But even without this intimate knowledge I could appreciate the satire and dark humour of Badfellas which is due to clever, quite sparse writing and an excellent translation by Emily Read. I especially liked the entire sections of the book which have little to do with things-Mafia, such as the parallels drawn between the present-day circumstances in the Region and Normandy’s WWII ‘invasion’ by Americans which are very amusingly done. There’s also a brilliant passage describing how the presence of the Blake/Manzoni family in France finally gets back to the head of the Cosa Nostra in his New York prison cell that’s almost worth the price of the book alone.

For me the most interesting aspect of the novel was the depiction of the impact of the exile on all the characters, including the repugnant Fred/Giovanni. In some ways he is the most affected, having lost his status and his raison d’être, but I couldn’t summon an ounce of sympathy for him and in fact his general attitude still makes me cranky enough that I shan’t talk about him any more. Maggie, whose real name is Livia, is his wife and she is also deeply affected by the exile. She misses her friends and family, but also feels such guilt over her circumstances and the part she played in her husband’s actions that she develops an almost unstoppable zeal for doing good to redeem herself. She cooks wonderful food for the poor FBI agents who assigned as their guardians because they too have to live away from their families for long periods of time and she becomes heavily involved in charitable pursuits in the town. Their two children Belle and Warren are also deeply affected by their father’s actions, though in Warren’s case it has a particularly surprising result as the 14-year old plots how he will recapture the place in the organisation that his father lost by his cowardly actions.

Overall I loved the writing and the way Badfellas is constructed and would recommend it based on these terrific attributes. But I am, like Norman at Crime Scraps, still a little conflicted about the content of the book. Because although Fred Blake/Giovanni Manzoni is revealed as a repellent human being with no redeeming qualities that I could discern he does, essentially, get away with murder. Repeatedly. And something about that irks me. I can deal with a book that has no morality to it at all, but I struggle just a bit harder to deal with a book which seems to suggest, however subtly, that crime pays. And that hideous, murderous crime pays a villa in the French countryside.

My rating 3.5/5

[mrmapcase · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Okay bear with me for a minute because this gets a little complicated. Malavita was originally released in English as Badfellas, (a homage to the main characters love of the movie Goodfellas,) and is now being re-released under its original French name due to a movie version coming out, which is called The Family. The author is Italian-French, and has a British translator which leads to a novel about Americans from New Jersey that doesn’t feel like an accurate portrayal. It feels more like a thoughtful look at a family long away from home with some small stereotypes thrown in. This is pleasant read but is not a typical gangster story.Free review copy.

[smik_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When the Blake family move into a villa in Normandy in the middle of the night, it is the most recent in a chain of moves. For they are no ordinary family. The father Fred Blake is an ex-Mafia boss and the family is part of the FBI's witness-protection programme. They are forced to move whenever their latest location is discovered. The teenage children, a son and daughter, have learnt to make the best of things, and seem remarkably resilient.With the family comes the FBI watchers who take up residence in a house opposite, and keep the Blakes under 24/7 observation, and monitor not only their phone calls but those of neighbours. The family are instructed not to draw attention to themselves, but for Fred, wife Maggie, son Warren, and daughter Belle, staying out of the limelight is exceptionally difficult. This time Fred takes up the guise of an author, and even begins to type up his memoirs. Maggie takes an interest in local good works, while the children seem to settle down well at the local school. Each however is following his or her own agenda.But Fred's status as an author brings a certain notoriety, and each of others show talents that push them forward in their own spheres. Add to that the fact that Fred is not really a tolerant man, and used to making his point of view in his own violent way. The story is full of macabre humour and satire. I felt throughout as if it had been written with one eye on its potential as a screen play.But is it crime fiction? Well, deaths occur, but mysteries they are not. The threads resolve eventually in a way I should have seen coming, but that in some senses I found disappointing.And perhaps it says something that the character I liked best was Malavita the dog, an ash-grey Australian Cattle Dog, which by the way, is not the dog on the cover.BADFELLAS has been short-listed for the 2010 CWA International Dagger.

[etxgardener · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Giovanni Manzoni is a New Jersey mob boss turned stool pigeon for the FBI. His testimony has been responsible for sending dozens of wise guys to jail, including the cap di tutti capos, Don Mimino, so naturally, there is a price on his head. It soon becomes apparent that he cannot safely live under the witness protection program in the United States, so his FBI handlers move him to France where we find him living in a small town in Normandy under the name of Fred Blake when the story opens.Fred is bored and turns to writing his memoirs with hilarious results. His wife is trying to find a place of meaning in the small community and the children are navigating the social structure at the local lycee.Meanwhile the FBI handlers are camped out across the street keeping an eye on all the neighbors and trying to keep Fred and his family alive.This is harder to do than one would think, and when, through a bizarre chain of events, Don Mimino figures out where they are living, it sets off a chain of events that leads to Mafia mayhem at its finest.This book is a quick, fun read on the order of Carl Hiassim and has been made into a movie called "The Family" starring Robert DeNiro (ho else now that Jame Gandofini is dead?).

[smallmeadow_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is my favorite book in a long time. While humorous, for the most part fairly subtle and not overdone. I don't know if the movie has been released yet or if it goes by the title of the book, but I'm sure it will be popular. I's glad to have read the book first.

[nml_dc · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I stopped reading once I realized I had seen the movie. Entertaining and tightly scripted though.