The Emperor of Ocean Park

Rating:
Summary: A Waste of Prime Summer Reading Time
Review: A more appropriate title would be "The Emperor's New Clothes". I heard that a lot of people were enjoying this book so I thought I would join in the fun. This book took me weeks and weeks to finish and it would seem as if it would be days before anything interesting would happen. I did manage to finish it, but was not really pleased with the book. I can't even remember how it ended, to tell you the truth. I would urge you to avoid this book unless you want to be bored stiff.

Rating:
Summary: Excellently Written But Patience Is Definitely Required!
Review: Stephen Carter is an excellent writer but The Emperor Of Ocean Park is not an easy book to read. I'd suggest you only attempt to read this 654 page book when you are willing to invest a lot of time and patience in wading through Carter's extensive descriptive passages in order to for the plot to move along. The plot, itself, while very slow moving, is intelligently crafted. The characters are very well-developed and are probably what is most memorable about this book. On a few occasions early on in the book I had to force myself to keep from moving on to another book due to the snail's pace of the story line, even though I was enjoying the high quality of Carter's writing. All in all, reading The Emperor Of Ocean Park is "work" -- but pleasurable work. I think you'll enjoy this literary mystery but,as I said, only attempt reading it when you're in a particularly patient frame of mind.

Rating:
Summary: Too Many Unnecessary Words!
Review: I love mystery and intrigue and I found some of both in this book, but I had to fight my way through too many bragging words about wealth and superior intelligence. Not what I want so much of in a mystery, or any fictional book. It's interesting and important to learn something about characters lives, but enough is enough. Even some incidental characters were given long, detailed, unneeded biographies. Should have been at least 300 fewer pages.

Rating:
Summary: Overweighted barley likeable
Review: Mr Carter definetly has an agenda to push, and he does so every step of the way, the very, very long way. He's a member of the elite 'darker nation', as we are constantly reminded, a law professor, who has to always show his intelligence, and condescending attitude.
There IS a great story in this book, but both the author and editor fail to flesh it out in a way to make the reader comfortable. Instead, both have chosen to go with the more confusing, complex and pendantic writing that just weighs down this story and reader.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent read
Review: This book is absolutely fabulous! I made many notes in the margins and will definately read it again. The character development is intense and at times I felt like Mr. Carter was eavesdropping in on my family! Having grown up with an attorney and now judge at a time when it was still revolutionary for black people to do such things, I related to many passages in this book. By far, the best book I've read this year. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Please write another one ...
Review: I usually knock off a book of this size in about a week. This one took me over three to finish. Why? Because it was like reading "A Prayer for Owen Meany" or "The Prince of Tides" in that every sentence was carefully constructed and packed with content. Nothing could be skimmed or skipped. Although it did get a bit melodramatic at the end, doesn't Stephen King (my hero) do the same in all his novels? So I can hardly fault Carter for this. I loved it, loved it, loved it.
The book was a bit infuriating in that it seemed to give up so little of the mystery as I went along. All is not revealed until literally the final reel, and all is not resolved until the very last sentence. But perhaps that is as it should be in a great mystery novel. It did what a great work of fiction always does for me; makes me want to do things - in this case, learn to play chess, travel to New England, construct a mystery of my own for others to sort out after my death. Why the hell not!

Rating:
Summary: Fun, well-written mystery
Review: This reads like a Grisham novel, with more intelligence. I liked the added twist of upper-class Black society. Overall, a great read, and one that would probably work well for a book club.

Rating:
Summary: A promising debut
Review: Stephen Carter's book has an imaginative, interesting and sophisticated plot. But it is not easy to read as the author's academic and african-american backgrounds create too much "interference". University professors (suffering from the same blue book syndrome that students are known to suffer from) would always write five pages to describe something that would easily fit a single page. In addition Mr. Carter's emphasis on the fact that "the emperor of the ocean park" is an African-American and terms like "as a member of the paler nation" deflect the reader's attention from the superb plot. As a European reader to whom the skin color of a person means very little (or nothing at all) I feel that the author's focus on his (and the main character's) skin color is creating an imbalance. Despite the effort it took to finich,I enjoyed the book and I believe that if Mr. Carter can control his academic reflexes and his fixation on the struggle among paler and darker nations he will turn into a superb author.

Rating:
Summary: Good Book - Could Have Been Shorter
Review: I thought the book overall was very good. I would recommend it and have recommended it to my friends. It's intriguing and the characters are interesting. However, the writer just went into too much detail on history of each and every relationships and the main character's feelings of inadequacy and paranoia. I think we got this aspect of the character very early on, but the writer wanted to remind us of it every time the character doubted his wife, etc. The mystery is okay and the insight into the class issue was very accurate. He knows what he's talking about. I was excited to hear it is being made into a movie.

Rating:
Summary: Angst Ridden
Review: I was surprised by this book's similarity to those of similar angst ridden novels by Jewish writers such as Philip Roth. Although the central figure had not been emasculated by his mother he still seemed to have been. He is weak, self-centered and as decidedly unattractive as a man as Portnoy. He is just like Woody Allen wringing his hands and talking, talking, talking. I kept at it because I thought it had to get better. It didn't.