Rating: 
Summary: Great plot, disappointing characters
Review: While I appreciated the gritty reality and fast paced plot line of this book, I was in some ways disappointed with the characters. Price explores the effects of the events on the Dempsy community very throughly, but the effort at times seemed rushed, as if he was more interested in depicting the scenes than exploring their meaning. Despite Price's effort to show the "truth-seeking" aspect of reporter, Jesse Haus, she comes off selfish and unsympathetic. The amount of energy wasted on her character seemed pointless. Lorenzo Council is more interesting, as a cop balancing between a need to do his job and to protect Dempsy, the place he grew up. The Friends of Kent group and their obsession was fascinating. Yet some of the people we want to know better, like Brenda, her family, and the father of her child are all revealed in brief glimpses that interest the reader, but fade away all too quickly.
Rating: 
Summary: A Police Procedural That Isn't
Review: You might classify this tale of a police investigation of a death as a police procedural, but it really doesn't fit that category. PP addicts may get bored with a book that for almost 550 pages chugs through only two days of activity. It is heavy with dialogue - somewhat like a George Higgins novel. Price got the idea for this novel from the true event where a southern lady drove her kids into a lake, and reported them kidnapped. The author takes this plot thread and moves it to New Jersey, his home. I was delighted with the characters, and with Price's descriptive writing; he's a master of the metaphor - and simile. The characters, their dialogue and feelings, are everything in this novel. While the book delves into the problem of racial conflict it mostly re-emphasizes the known problems without shedding much new light on the issue. Those looking for an action packed thriller should look elsewhere; that is not what this novel is about. If you are interested in a modern "American Tragedy", however, give it a try.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing
Review: Hmmmm....with all due respect, I think some of the other reviewers here are missing the point. You don't pick up a 700+ page novel and not gear up for a long read, and if you know Price at all, you know he's not your standard thriller writer (which is a good thing, believe me). I'm a little mystified by the Price fan that didn't like it though--seems like we were reading two different books. And why see the titles of soul music songs in the book as a tired racial comment rather than the product of a character's completely deranged mind? At any rate, I found Freedomland to be an astounding achievement, with beautifully drawn fully human characters, pitch-perfect dialogue, plenty of action and tension, and a bone-deep sadness beneath it that's miles away from the prickly optimism of Clockers. Unlike Price's recent excellent Samaritan, it's not emotionally claustrophic either--Freedomland is in fact a modern urban epic, rich in character, depth, and texture. This is a book I continually recommend to people who believe that commercial fiction can't stir the soul. I will grant that reading Freedomland can ultimately be an emotionally exhausting experience, but that is what I look for in books--to paraphrase Kafka (at least I think it was Kafka), a book should be the axe that breaks the frozen lake inside us. And Freedomland is a great big axe.
Rating: 
Summary: Calling Scott Rudin, my screenplay's, er, novel is done.
Review: A lot's wrong with this overpraised book. It's too long, the story's conventional and slow-moving, it's predictable, the prose is awkward and reads too often like a screenplay, except when it tries to go inside the characters, and then it reads like a parody of every cliche police-story ever written: the hard-nosed female reporter without a social life, the black detective torn between his job and his community, the hot-headed white cop... the book's conflict, as concretized by the black detective Lorenzo, rests in questions of cultural, racial, and economic truth and honesty. Not unworthy subjects, but there's no blazing insights here, and the plot's so shopworn that the story provides no real tangential pleasures either. "Freedomland" is ultimately condescending and manipulative for no good reason. Its first hundred pages paint a compelling picture of Dempsey, and a few of the plot twists will play well in the movie. Producer Scott Rudin will undoubtedly make this a better movie than it is a book.
Rating:
Summary: A slow spiral into the Abyss
Review: This is one of the most brilliant books I have ever read. Exhausting, draining, exhilarating, infuriating, it touches every emotion in the human psyche. Richard Price is obviously interested in characters, what motivates them, what can make a broken-down woman tell a calculated lie and send an entire city spinning into an inferno. Devastating moral lessons, compelling interactions between chracters of all racial biases and hidden agendas, and an intense, creeping momentum that sends you to the edge and beyond. Price is an exceptional storyteller, a Pat Conroy of the urban slumscape, with images that will stay with me long after the final chapter is read.
Rating:
Summary: A bit long, but still kept my interest.
Review: Once I read the back of the book, I figured that it had to be interesting, which it was. I believe, however, that it could still have been good if it was shorter than 721 pages. There was some unnecessary information here and there that would have been better left out. All in all, its a pretty good read if you dont mind a long book.
Rating:
Summary: Too much and not enough
Review: Like many of the others who have reviewed this book, I felt like it started out promisingly enough. It seemed like a nice, little ripped from the headlines drama with some open-ended observations about race and poverty and the enormous cultural and experiential divide that separates the haves from the have nots. But, apparently, that early promise was built on characters of sand, because they and their stories became a bit of an endless loop of shell-shocked realization and sweating inertia. If I were to give Price the benefit of the doubt I would say that his character's inability to act effectively, say anything succinctly or solve even the most basic of their own problems was a purposeful mirror held up to urban America. Hamlet-like, Price's characters wallow and writhe and go mad, and when they act, they do the wrong thing. Perhaps, he meant his character's sluggishness to be representative. Maybe he meant us to feel as trapped in the Armstrong Houses, in poverty, in addiction, in stupidity, in injustice as the characters who live there. If that was his intent, he definitely succeeded. At some point, however, it got to be too much. All the characters just allowed themselves to be buffeted about by circumstance until I felt like screaming. The character of the reporter, Jesse was the worst of the offenders. I found myself hoping that I would be provided front row seats to something really terrible happening to her. To sum up, I felt that this book had some structural problems. But, maybe this long road to nowhere is as good a metaphor for race relations in America as any other.
Rating:
Summary: Freedomland
Review: A bit long at 700-plus pages, dense and slow-moving in parts, but the most accurate and compelling depiction of life in an impoverished urban housing project that I can remember reading. You feel in your gut the daily tragedies that Price's characters endure and laugh out loud at the dark absurdities they routinely encounter. It reminded me in places of Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities." What left me scratching my head was the title. Why "Freedomland"? Crucial events occur in an abandoned theme park called Freedomtown. There's only a passing reference or two to a bigger, more ambitious park called Freedomland, on which Freedomtown was modeled. Given the title, I felt at the end that I'd missed something, which is dissatisfying. Maybe someone more perceptive can clue me in.
Rating:
Summary: Influential
Review: I have read both Freedomland and Clockers and I love both books, but Freedomland has a harshness/realism in its message that has stayed with me ever since I read it a year ago. Yes, some scenes are drawn out (When the Dempsy and Armstrong cops are scouting the area where Debra claimed she was carjacked did not have to be thirty some pages, and the search for the boy in the woods was too long). But even during scenes like that it still remained interesting and thought-provoking. One of the great things about Richard Price's writing is that he is able to mix mystery, suspense, urban decay, dialogue so searing and real it encaptures you, and plots and subplots that are climaxed beautifully. But what Richard Price does best is make a story using characters that we normally wouldn't feel any sympathy or respect for, least of all able to send a meaningful message, and do just that. Even after Debra tells the truth about what happened to her Cody, I couldn't help but have sympathy for her. And Jesse and Lorenzo were such tragic characters yet by the end you see them for what they really are, two well meaning people caught up in not only a game, but a life that makes them stern and burnt out and hardened.
Rating: 
Summary: don't waste your time and money
Review: This book was boring I really didn't enjoy it much. When I saw the cover and read the into it looked like a good book, but once I read it I thought it was worthless. I don't think that I would recommend this to any one. All this book was about was that the girl that was one of the main characters cried all the way through the book complaining about her child being kidnapped. I mean I understand she is sad and devastated but not through half of the book,and maybe even more. Well I just thought this was not a good book.
|
