ALWAYS OUTNUMBERED, ALWAYS OUTGUNNED

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!!
Review: Walter Mosely will soon be my favorite novelist if he continues writing thought provoking characters like Socrates Fortlow. We are given a glimse of a man and his thoughts, who has been through emotions that I can't dream of. We loath him, like him and grow to love him in this fasinating story. We only ask one thing of Mosely after this: Give us more Socrates!!!

Rating:
Summary: Maybe Mosley ain't so bad, after all.
Review: This is another boonie dog book review from Wolfie and Kansas. When we reviewed Walter Mosley's book "A Little Yellow Dog", we complained that it was miscaninthropic. In Mosley's latest book, "Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned", a collection of generally quite good short stories about an ex-con named Socrates Fortlow, Mosley displays an improved attitude towards canines. In a story entitled "Black Dog", Fortlow rescues a large black dog who was run over by a car. Fortlow also punches out the driver who committed the atrocious act. Now that dogs have moved from the status of evil nemesis to victims in need of rescue from benevolent humans in Mosley's writing, perhaps in the future Mosley will portray us in a positive light.

Rating:
Summary: Profound mixture of charcter, detail, individual morality.
Review: A masterful achievement. Without ever losing the drive of his stories Mr. Mosley constructs brilliant morality tales about characters you immediately care about and root for. He transforms mundane details of a table repaired, a meal shared, or an offer refused into deep emotional events. I loved this book.

Rating:
Summary: a novel whose protagonist haunts the reader
Review: as a volunteer in a local prison, i read this book with interest. i had never read any of walter mosley's fiction novels and had no preconceptions. socrates rings true as a man who has done wrong, knows it, and strives to rise above it, knowing that he can never forgive his past crimes. as rilke says: "This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings." i am anxious to share this work with the men in my group - men who know this same struggle.

Rating:
Summary: Staccato stories turn to subtle variations on a theme.
Review: Mosley proves himself to be a very good writer who can develop characters with the likes of Faulkner and O'Connor with his collection of stories about Socrates Fortlow. Whereas the beginning is tough for those of us who expected a novel, the individual stories add up to a sum greater than most novels. Socrates Fortlow comes alive in the pages like no other chararacter in my memory has.

Rating:
Summary: School of hard knocks
Review: This is one of Mosley's best. He creates a heartbreaking, redemptive character in Socrates Fortlow. These chapters all connect or stand on their own as a testament to a man who has learned the hard way the lesson of redemption. His dignity and strength shine forth in all of his dealings with the people in his life. They are all connected by Fortlow's message of responsibility for one's actions. Walter Mosley has created a language that brings out the quiet strength in Socrates Fortlow. Can't wait for other Fortlow books.

Rating:
Summary: A stunning, absorbing collection
Review: I've read and enjoyed the Easy Rawlins mysteries, but I Mosely's latest--a linked collection of stories about an ex-con/Knight Errant in Watts--firmly cements him (in my mind at least) as of one of the greats. I haven't been this absorbed by a character (or admired such economy of language) since I picked up my first Chandler novel years ago. In a recent interview in Time Out New York, Mosely hinted that he had originally planned to do 47 Socrates Fortlow stories, instead of just the dozen or so that appear in Always Outnumbered. Damn, would I kill to read the rest.

Rating:
Summary: Not quite what I expected
Review: This book did'nt grasp and hold my attention like the Easy Rawlins books. I guess I was looking for a good Walter Mosley mystery, and this was'nt mystery at all. I can't say that I will follow the Socrates series as I did the Easy Rawlins series.

Rating:
Summary: This book is hard to outgun
Review: This book has a profound emotional resonance that proves that the author has surpassed genre and produced true art. I read it in the parking lot before I went into work, it was absorbing, I was late, and the thought and flavors of the book stayed with me all that day and longer. It is bleak and inspiring, engaging and challenging in its language, its characters and its forthright moral teaching.

Rating:
Summary: Yeah!
Review: Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned is The Prodigy’s long-awaited follow-up to 1997’s double-platinum #1- charting The Fat Of The Land. Returning with a sleazy, funky and far more punk album than anything Liam Howlett has ever recorded, the premier electronica dance act for the alternative masses targets both its core fan base at clubs and a new generation of technofreaks with Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned.