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Summary: Addendum to my review
Review: I apparently have FOUNDING BROTHERS on the brain, because I think I credited the Pulitzer Prize winning Joseph Ellis with authorship of INVISIBLE MAN in my earlier review.Let's try this again. THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK can't make up its mind whether it wants to be John Grisham or Ralph Ellison, so it's content to be a pale comparison of either in their respective genres. There, that's better.
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Summary: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE -- DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE!!
Review: ... The dialogue is stilted, the pacing is dreadfully slow, and the fact that anyway sees this as good literature...
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Summary: Compelling, ambitious and exploratory
Review: I find it dissapointing that a great many critics and readers are reviewing this novel through the lens of the media hype that surrounded it's sale. I'm still baffled as to why reviewers feel that the amount of advance money paid to an author is somehow relevant to a critical analysis of an author's work. I suspect that Mr. Carter's articulate but sometimes strident social commentary has earned him his fair share of adversaries in academica and beyond. No doubt, many readers are approaching his first novel with knives drawn. However, THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK does attempt to straddle a divide between social chronicle and thriller, and it has a better foot hold on the social chronicle side. Readers unfamilar with America's black middle class will find themselves unexpectedly drawn into this sprawling, ambitious tale and thankful that they have Talcott Garland's self-aware and incisive narrative voice to guide them through it. While this is not an assured and well-oiled *thriller*, it does have its fair share of genuine suspense; the use of present tense creates a riveting tone that sustain's for the novels hefty length. Carter uses fine-tuned visuals to complement his authentic dialouge. Carter takes many side trips, all of them absorbing, but most are followed by a not-so-subtle attempt to yank readers back into the over riding mystery - - a dissapointing flaw and a frequent mistake of first time novelists. It's a technique that's not needed. The narrative voice is strong and readers will find themselves surrendering to it regardless of whether it keeps leading them back to the mysterious death of Judge Garland. But THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK is a massive success, despite its flaws. It's an illuminating and compelling journey and a brilliant analysis of an American minority - upper Middle Class African Americans - that most of us take for granted or paint white.
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Summary: A Slow Slide Downhill
Review: Devoured the beginning, plodded through the middle, & skimmed the last twenty pages just to say I read the whole thing. A very disappointing, unbelievable ending. Read my favorite short scene while you're in the bookstore-- pages 111-114 (the classroom scene with Avery Knowland); if you still have to read it, check it out from the library. I'm going to try Mr. Carter's non-fiction book, "God's Name in Vain" since I enjoyed his "sideline soapbox passages" more than the dialogue and action. Seems he was trying to reach every possible market with this thriller--rich, poor, middle-class, African-American, white, gay, straight, intellectual, young, happily married, unhappily married, FBI agent, etc. etc. etc. My worst complaint: didn't like the use of the phrases "paler nation" and "darker nation." Are these the next NEW politically correct ways to describe one's skin color? This verbose "suspense thriller" lost its thrill a page at a time.
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Summary: Confusing, Complicated, Boring
Review: Carter writes well sometimes in this effort, although I much prefer his legal writing. And the context for the novel is an interesting one, a black America about which some know little (although not as many know as little as Carter seems to think). The problem here is simple, it's the story: laughably complicated and, ultimately, uninteresting. I'm still not altogether certain as to whom half of the people in the book "work" for (I don't want to get into plot specifics, but the comment betrays a serious failure of the novel). And, worse, I wonder why the Judge didn't just tell Addison the punchline before he died. It would have saved Prof. Carter and the rest of us so much tedium. Sadly, if the author were just another lawyer, no one would care anout this book. I looked forward to it, and I was disappointed.
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Summary: A good book in need of a good editor
Review: A controverial ultra-conservative African-American judge dies under mysterious circumstances, leaving it to his son, an Ivy League law professor, to investigate what "arrangements" the judge had made and why so many people have a vested interest in finding out just what those "arrangements" are. As his son, Talcott (AKA "Misha") gets deeper into this mystery, there are many surprises for him (and the reader) along the way, as he painfully discovers what sort of man his father really was, while at the same time finding himself in constant danger (despite assurances emanating from his corrupt "Uncle Jack" that no harm will come to him or his family). Couple this with his disintegraing marriage to a woman who is a candidate for a federal judgeship, and you have a novel that is more than just a gripping mystery. This book presents a world that few know, the upper-crust of African-American society (which the author constantly refers to as the "darker nation"), while delving into issues of family, petty faculty rivalries, and even a strong dose of Christian spirituality. I found myself immersed in this novel, hardly able to wait to see what comes next. That being said, this sprawling book could have used some judicious editing. There were stretches in the narrative that were rather dull, and some were dull and annoying at the same time, especially the times the narrator spent with his toddler son whose vocabulary didn't extend much past "Dare you, daddy." The toddler is one character that could have been dropped from the story in order to move it along at a little quicker clip. In fact, there is a huge cast of characters here of which it is certain that 2/3 of them will be dropped when this story gets turned into a movie. The author could have easily trimmed the list of characters and probably cut the book by about 200 pages without much loss at all. As a Christian, I appreciate the Christian underpinnings of this book, but, as much as I hate to say it, the Rev. Morris Young, who gives voice to many solid Christian principles, is another character who could have been eliminated to move the story along. Also, the whole chess motif which forms the framework of the narrative is esoteric enough that a very small minority would even be able to understand the chess problems presented here. All this is not to say that this is not a good book, because it is, but its excessive length and dull spots keep it from being a great book. Still, this has to be one of the essential reads for the summer of 2002.
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Summary: A smart thriller
Review: This is one of the best books I've read in months. Although it's a lengthy novel (650+ pages), the author develops the characters well, and features characters who are flawed but believable. I was hesitant to try this book, because I was afraid I wouldn't get the chess symbolism and that I couldn't relate to the upper class African American subculture that dominates this book. But I was pleasantly surprised -- I found the book suspenseful and intelligent. I would recommend it for anyone who is looking for something more thoughtful than a summer beach blanket easy read.
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Summary: A first rate thriller
Review: There's a lot of hype going around about this book, so I wanted to read it myself and make up my own mind. I don't need critics and reviewers to tell me what I like and don't like; I'm an independent sort. Having read this book, and having enjoyed it tremendously, I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good thriller. This first time fiction author has done a superb job of keeping the reader's interest in his plot and characters. He is so evenhanded about the various peoples' political beliefs that, at the end, I still don't know whether he is a liberal or a conservative, since both sides get some rather severe bashing here and there. Also, even though most of the characters in the book are black, once you get going into the plot race becomes completely irrelevant, which says a lot about the quality of the writing. Some folks are complaining that this book is too long. I just think that these days we are getting too lazy to read books of any length; it's the "new age" lifestyle many people lead. If that feeling were prevalant in the 19th century, how would the works of Dickens, Trollope, etc. have fared? Not very well, I'm afraid. Excellent writing is excellent writing, no matter what the lenght of the work, and this book kept me intensely interested from beginning to end.
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Summary: Yes it's long -- but worth the read!
Review: Yes, Emperor is long (650 pages!) -- but I simply couldn't put the book down. The stage is set in the Prologue (which I don't usually read, but I'm glad I did -- there were a lot of clues there), when we get a feel for the tense relationship between the family members of the narrator, Talcott Garland. We also find out about Abbey, and the circumstances surrounding her hit-and-run death so many years before. This becomes important as the book progresses... Judge Oliver Garland dies suddenly under very suspicious circumstances, and bequeaths a home in the Ocean Park section of Martha's Vineyard -- along with a mysterious letter -- to his son Talcott. Talcott tries, through a series of clues in the strange letter, to unravel the mystery of "the arrangements"... Talcott has no earthly idea of what these arrangements are, but he quickly discovers that there are many people whom he's never met who are desperate to find them. As more and more people end up murdered, Talcott knows that he must find the arrangements before the evil ones do -- before he ends up dead as well. This mystery is different -- more real to life, because the ends aren't tied up neatly -- proof that "happily ever after" doesn't necessarily mean that everything works out the way that the reader expects. Emperor is unpredictable, well-written, and occasionally hilariously funny. Definitely worth the lengthy read. :-)
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Summary: The Emperor of Ocean Park
Review: This is one of the worst books I have read in a long while and I am amazed that it found a publisher. It is 650 pages of weak storyline with repetition,rambling and soapbox preaching throughout. Every single character that our dislikable narrator encounters supplies only the most cryptic of information. I read through to the end just to see whether the final chapters could have given me something to believe but no, the storyline remained as implausible and disjointed as ever.
Whatever were the publishers thinking of...
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