Casa Nostra by Chris Sarracini and Nick Kilislian

Casa Nostra by Chris Sarracini

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


*I received this book from Udon Entertainment and Netgalley for an honest review*

This is an annoying book from beginning to end. From the super slow snail pace, to the many times flashbacks interrupted the story; to the many times some random scene would suddenly occur and there’d be no explanation or the sudden change in plot line until much later. Biggest problem, though? The art was such that I had trouble telling the characters apart. This ‘matched perfectly’ with the text that liked being vague about who was who and what was going on. Like how the book opens with a prologue, some unnamed ungendered narrator talking about papa the criminal. Long after the fact we learn that the narrator is 26, a woman named Claire, and half-Italian, half-Japanese.

Story: A graphic novel set in 1933, mostly in Indiana, with occasional trips elsewhere, like into Chicago.
As noted, the story opened with someone telling about the first time they heard their father's name. Not that the reader knew the narrators name until much later. Nor did the reader actually learn the father’s name (unless it was in some section I couldn’t read). Narrator, Claire, had something of a tough upbringing, tough childhood I mean. What with the criminal father, and having the police routinely stop by to beat up her mother to try to get her to tell where father was. Not that she ever did talk

After that beginning bit, we get to 'I'm 26 now and still wonder if he is still robbing banks' (not an exact quote - it's hard to get the book to work on my system, so I can't really get back to get exact quote). So the 'meat' of the story starts when the narrator is 26. We still didn't know gender by the time the book moved to 'present time' (1933). Though the book description had me assuming that we were learning about the daughter of this bank robber. Assumption was correct. Narrator is 'Claire' and female.

Claire, with four other women, runs a 'safe house' where criminals hide from the law. They’ve been doing it a while, and set things up with the Chicago Syndicate. So the criminals know not to break the rules (don’t touch the women; turn over firearms; etc.) or the Syndicate would get them (not that all criminals obeyed – I mean, we are talking about criminals here). Things were going well enough with Claire and the safe house until the ‘golden boy’, Capone’s favorite guy Rizzo, started to go insane and kill women. And the Syndicate wanted to stay at the safe house. Naturally Claire wanted no part of it and naturally she couldn’t’ say no. And naturally things didn’t go well. What with Rizzo having a history of going around being a serial killer and killing women.

There's a lot of backstory in this book, by the way. Even after we got to present day, we still had bits of the past being spilled on the reader. Not my favorite thing to have happen.
One of the problems with the book is that the art makes it hard to tell who is who. Like, somewhere along the way one criminal kills another - I could tell the two apart because one was fat. A cleaner came and cleaned. Then . . . some story about a man killing a woman (this would be Rizzo and some random woman, though the reader doesn’t know this at the time, learns after the fact). Just . . there. Is that the cleaner? Claire the narrator? Didn't know immediately because all the women look the same (for the most part, okay, not really, but it isn't easy to tell them apart), and the men aren't that distinctive either. More impressions of men and women than exact representations. So, I couldn’t always tell what was happening because I couldn’t always tell which characters were doing stuff (seriously, I’m not just saying that – the woman in the snuff piece? Looked like Claire – at least to my poor eyes; or at least close enough to possibly be sister or mother). I couldn’t tell what was going on despite this being a graphic novel - and I could literally see them doing stuff. But . . . which vaguely Italian looking guy is this? The one I already meet? Someone else? Which vaguely mixed race woman is this? Claire? One of the other women who work in the safe house? Some completely different woman? As could be seen from my description of the beginning - the text itself doesn't help matters. Since I didn't even know the narrator's name or gender for a good portion of the time until we finally got to 'the present' (of 1933). Sooo hard to tell what's going on.

This happens several times. 'This' being random scenes suddenly interrupting the flow of the story. Giving information about a new character. Quite annoying and quite breaking the flow of the super slow, very very slow story. This thing was on snail time.

Tough story to tell what was going on – more because I literally couldn’t tell the characters apart. There are large pieces of the story I am unclear on because of that factoid, though I know/picked up the major pieces.

An okay story, I suppose. Just . . . difficult to read.

Rating: 2.6

March 5 2018




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