Finding the Princess: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: One of the finest and best written contemporary novels
Review: Jeffrey Harper is a street-savvy columnist for a New York City Newspaper in Finding The Princess, a story of racial confrontation between the police and the black community. An erudite writer, Thomas Hauser presents a deeply engaging novel with commentary on love and other enduring human values threaded deftly through a collage of characters and events set in the New York City urban landscape. Rich in texture, strong character portraits, exciting plot twists, Finding The Princess is one of the finest and best written contemporary novels to be published this year.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific Read
Review: Thomas Hauser cogently examines race relations in his new novel. This sometimes comedic and suspenseful book about a journalist captures life, love and politics in New York. The reader suspects that there exists a real-life evil sister and other odd characters populating Mr. Hauser's world.

Rating:
Summary: Pleasurable, and informative, but handle with care on race
Review: Thomas Houser is an accomplished novelist. Finding the Princess is an excellent novel, serious and light-hearted at the same time; entertaining, surprising, and full of twists and turns. The author's journalistic background shows in his knowledge of the details of New York life, its politics, and its tenuous race relations. The most appealing aspect of the novel is its writing style: witty, simple, colorful and at times poetic. The variation of the narrative between the present and flashbacks from the past enriches the plot, although sometimes the narrative is bogged down with detail. The novel is rich with action, events and incidents that reflect the turbulence in New York life, adding a strong element of suspense and anticipation. But some events, and characters, seem to have been forced into the novel, such as the character of Edward Burgess, Geoffrey Harper's psychiatrist. Despite the unpleasant early years of Harper's life, the exposition of his character in the novel does not go well with someone in need of psychiatric care. Harper is not presented as a man who really suffered much while growing up. That came as a bit of a surprise to me. Another is Kate Reilly, as lovable and moving as she is, I could not help but make the comparison with Love Story's heroine. The author's nostalgia for the sixties and seventies surfaces in the character of Kate Reilly. In terms of subject matter, the novel deals with various issues at the same time: love, race relations in New York, family, childhood, and sex abuse. Despite an obvious effort at impartiality, the novel in fact leans hard on blacks in NY. Blacks come across in the novel as violent, bigoted, exploitative, and unsatisfiable. Other minorities show similar attitudes, but not in the absolute. In the case of blacks, the novel ends with even the good fatherly Walter Bailey joining the ranks of Thaddeus DuPree. The latter is one of the most impressive creations of Houser. DuPree is a tremendously enjoyable character to follow in the novel. All in all, the novel is a pleasure to read.