Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I suspect that the first 2/3 of this book are true. The vignettes of life on the streets of Hell's Kitchen in the 60s ring true. The section on life in a boy's "reform school" is UNDERSTATED, if anything. In most such places, as brutal as the guards may be, the young thugs you are locked in with are even worse.
However, the last 1/3 of the book - the trial - is at least partly fantasy. As a prosecutor, I can tell you that the trial could not have progressed as described. The key to Michael's strategy was getting ex-guard Ferguson to testify about what a great guy the dead victim was, so that the truth would come out on cross-examination. However, testimony about a dead victim's character is NOT allowed at trial (except in certain cases where the defense is self-defense - but here, it was not). In real life, as soon as the judge heard ex-guard Ferguson begin to testify about the dead victim's character, he would have cut in and stopped the testimony.
I think that Carcaterra really was sent to some juvenile facility and was abused as badly as he describes. I think he wanted to write a book - a very shocking book - that would have an effect on the public's perception of such places and help to bring about change. But a simple autobiography describing the horrors wouldn't be readable, just sickening. A novel, no matter how readable, wouldn't be taken seriously. So he wrote a partially-fake autobiography with a gut-wrenching ending that most definitely has had an effect on public perception of juvenile detention centers. And I bet having his revenge, even if it was just fantasy-revenge, must have felt good. I hope so.
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