'The Gold Coast'

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The Gold Coast by Nelson DeMille was our book for July.  It was not my favorite, but I liked it the least of any of our members.  The highest rating was a 4 and mine was a 2, with an overall rating of 3.25.  It was a long book –700 pages, with no actual plot until about page 230.  The ending 200 pages were interesting, and actually somewhat surprising.   Once again, we all felt differently about the book, some really liked it, some thought it was an interesting read, and I did not care for it at all. But it was still great fun discussing it with friends, plus we had a lovely meal to accompany it.

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The book was touted as The Great Gatsby meets the Mafia.  It was set in the old monied Gold Coast, a section of the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America.   The huge estates are declining, because people can’t afford their upkeep. The two main characters were a lawyer, John who is wealthy because of his heiress wife, and Mafia don Frank who is buying into the neighborhood to supposedly get some legitimacy. 

The book is told from John’s point of view, and he grows more jaded and dissatisfied as the book drones on. I did not like any of the characters, and for the most part they didn’t like each other.  Many of the characters were stereotypical clones of each other.  DeMille paints a picture of extremely wealthy people who are all unhappy.  Enter the stereotypical mafia folks, and the two worlds clash.  I read the book, because it was a book club choice, but I would not have finished it, had I just picked it up to read.  It was not a new book—published in 1991, so you may have read it a long time ago.  Several of our members thought this was more a man's book, since it was recommended by one of the husbands.  If you have read it, what did you think?


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