Rating: 
Summary: Totally Infuriating - why anyone bother? why 4.2 mil advance
Review: Why this book can even be published is itself a mystery. And why the huge advance is a even greater mystery. Maybe it helped to have the most powerful agency behind him. This book should be 150 pages long and please please cut the self-aggrandizing mumbo jumbo. This Carter guy should stick with his academic writing and not inflicted his assinine creativity on the public.
Rating: 
Summary: Stellar
Review: The description and detail is phenomenal. The visuals are astounding. The plot is thick, and swallows you whole. I dare you to try and put this book down for more then four hours.
Rating: 
Summary: The Emperor of Ocean Park
Review: My review is short and sweet! I am on page 475 and cannnot wait to continue! What a refreshing novel! What a complex character Tal is! One review questions the continuing reference to his son as annoying. This is 2002! He(Tal)battles the same problems as most parents today.....the constant struggles of both parents working outside of the home, financial difficulties, and family relationship strains. I will definitely read the next novel by Dr. Carter.
Rating:
Summary: Bravo!
Review: Stephen L. Carter has presented us with an exquisitely accomplished first novel. One can only hope he plans to continue in his fiction writing. After an avalanche of family sagas, from Joyce Carol Oates' Mulvaneys to the disfunctional family of the dismal novel by "who you callin' Oprah" Franzen, The Emperor of Ocean Park outshines them all. While deftly exploring racial, social and political issues within the more privileged realms of American society, Carter also engages his readers with seamless plotting, memorable characters and a passion for the English language. Thank-you Mr. Carter, for a truly satisfying read.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Intelligent & Immensely Satifying
Review: I found Carter's book to be an intelligent, interesting and higly satisfying read. Intelligent is perhaps the key word because the protagonist is a highly intelligent man whose words and thoughts provide penetrating, witty, and often unconventional insights into the worlds of academia, judicial politics and middle-class Black America today.This is not a page-turning, seat-of-your pants type thriller. It's more like a long, multi-course Italian dinner that you savor, linger over and remember fondly for years to come. I can't wait for Carter's next novel.
Rating:
Summary: The Emperor of Ocean Park
Review: Stephen Carter first mystery novel was excellent. The book kept me reading from the first page. He did an excellent job developing his characters in the book.
Rating: 
Summary: O, for an editing pen...
Review: Although Stephen Carter offers us a glimpse into a world not open to many of us and his plot is decent, he gets lost in detail and polemic. Pointing out the inequities faced by a gifted African-American in the professional world is fine, but how many times do we have to read almost precisely the same passage. Also, he offers entirely too many frivolous details. Why on earth would we care what all three of his neighbor's children were doing while he was talking to an FBI agent? At first, I thought that what the book lacked was a fearless editor (it's not easy standing up to any writer, but Dr. Carter was perhaps a bit intimidating) who would notice that at one point he said he couldn't wink and then proceeded to do so about 100 pages later. After about 400 pages, I decided that he would also need to hone his fiction writing skills before I would read another of his book. The plot was good, but my goodness was I tired of hearing all that whining from the main character. No wonder his life fell apart!
So, should you read it? If you aren't daunted by nearly 700 pages, and you know how to scan over the repetitious parts, you might enjoy the insights into the culture and a rather twisted plot. Actually, you ought to wait for the movie--then it will be edited.
Rating:
Summary: A miserable but well-written experience
Review: Well-written, because the prose style is a perfect expression of the narrator and his outlook -- remote and frosty, viewing everyone and everything at a distance and seeing only slime. (Not that there isn't a lot of slime, but Talcott Garland is contemptuous even of things that are totally harmless such as his wife and his in-laws enjoying wine with dinner.) Miserable, because I could not find one single person in the book to care about. The inside-Washington maneuvers were the most interesting thing in the book; they reminded me of Advise and Consent. Talcott's outlook -- an absolute arrogance and contempt for everyone else -- put me in mind of Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited. I was very eager to read this book and I wanted to like it. I wish I could report that I did. Worst of all, from my point of view, it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. "Everything is slime and everyone has an ax to grind" is hardly news; it's not even wrong. It's just that in Talcott's view everyone else in the book is reduced down so that they are ONLY axes to grind, not human beings. ...
Rating:
Summary: Weak mystery; interesting political/legal commentary
Review: The so-called central mystery in the book is not what kept me enthralled. In fact, since the last 100 pages attempts to resolve the mystery - they are, by far, the weakest. Mr. Carter fills his novel with weak characters (even including the stock shady-underworld-figure seen in most legal thrillers) and slow pacing. Yet, instead of making the reader wallow in a sub-standard thriller, Mr. Carter infuses the novel with facsinating insights into the lives of affluent african-americans, the judical nomination process and law academia. These asides (while annoying to some) kept the novel interesting.
Rating:
Summary: The Emperor of Ocean Park
Review: Stephen L. Carter has written some significant books. His academic qualifications are unquestioned. Unfortunately, his ability to write mystery stories or serious novels is in serious question. This book could easily be 200 pages and 10,000 adjectives shorter. Talcott, the hero of the story, and the son of the Emperor of Ocean Park is as unsympathetic a protagonist as you could ever want. I didn't care for this book at all. And I definitely won't be reading Mr. Carter's next novel. What concerns me the most about this book is the incredible buzz surrounding its release. I cannot imagine how reputable critics were willing to give this novel a favorable review. It is a ponderous and clumsy effort at writing fiction by a man who should either stick to writing non-fiction or who should practice more before he publishes another novel. If you want a good read give this one a miss.
| 
