Samaritan

Rating:
Summary: A view of a world not often seen...
Review: A great book? No. Parts are compelling. Price writes with a great ear for dialogue and an uncanny ability to portray life in the inner-city. The story is solid and has some interesting twists. It is about men finding themselves and some women too. Ray is hard character to love as you sometimes want to shake some sense in to him. The ending is a bit pat and cliched, but still a well written look at a world most of us never see.

Rating:
Summary: A view of a world not often seen...
Review: A great book? No. Parts are compelling. Price writes with a great ear for dialogue and an uncanny ability to portray life in the inner-city. The story is solid and has some interesting twists. It is about men finding themselves and some women too. Ray is hard character to love as you sometimes want to shake some sense in to him. The ending is a bit pat and cliched, but still a well written look at a world most of us never see.

Rating:
Summary: Genre winner
Review: Certainly Price is not a great novelist, but he is a good storyteller. This novel is current, a fast paced and easy read, not especially predictable, and with much more depth than the usual novel of this genre. If you like this type of mystery, this is a superior book.

Rating:
Summary: Every addiction is a matter of life and death...including...
Review: co-dependency. Co-dependency is definitely Ray Mitchell's main addiction. He's an approval junkie. And he almost dies for his addiction, because "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

This is a fascinating mystery story, and kept me turning the pages fast, wishing, as one reviewer here put it, that I could slow down. But I couldn't. I just had to find out which one of those people Ray had to please who consitituted his personal Waterloo.

The characters were rich, unique and well-formed,
especially Nerese, the detective, and the children - his daughter Ruby, the kids from the projects.

And also: as a writer, I saw the theme of wanting - needing - to make someone else's life your own; to get into it, understand it, possibly even heal it by writing about it. There's a lot of hubris in that need. I'm currently writing a novel based on a tragic life, and sometimes I feel so good about what I hope to do - to find the answer to "Why?" But when I read this book I identified with Ray...I mean, is my need to heal through literary revelation simply a weakness? Is another's sad problem really any of my business? If the people associated with this character - his family, his friends - read my story - they may not thank me for it. And some of them, like Ray's batterer - might be angry about it. And yet, like Ray, I feel compelled to keep doing this work. If it wasn't so hard to make myself do it at times (writing is definitely not the "softer, easier way") I'd think it might be an addiction.

Price is a fantastic writer. Hope to read his other novels now.

Rating:
Summary: Snappy urban writing
Review: Ex-TV writer Ray Mitchell comes home to New Jersey to re-connect with his 13-year-old daughter and spread some of his good fortune around his boyhood stomping ground - the Hopewell Houses low-income housing project. He introduces his daughter to his childhood home and reaches out to her with stories of kids with names like Dub, Butchie, Psycho and Tweetie. And he volunteers his time teaching a writer's workshop at his old high school, though it's tough getting anybody to show up at first, "like pushing a rope," as the principal says.

Price's ("Clockers," "Freedomland," "The Wanderers") writing is urban, fluid, snappy and visual. He reveals his characters the way life does, in increments. Ray is immediately likable. He's an animated storyteller as interested - or more perhaps - in the other actors as he is in his own role. As a volunteer teacher he's eager, but self-conscious. That first day, no one comes and alone in the room Ray fidgets, "to conceal how awkward and vaguely embarrassed he was beginning to feel...coming off busy as hell, yet when the school's principal, Bill or Bob Egan, knocked on the open door of the empty lounge, Ray almost shot to his feet with relief." But the apologetic principal is only there to ask him to try again. " 'Sure,' Ray said, the day now like chalk in his mouth."

The story then jumps forward a month as another alumni of the school, a black policewoman, Nerese Ammons, arrives to give a presentation and is asked by the principal to look into a vicious assault on a volunteer teacher, Ray Mitchell, now lying half dead in a hospital bed. "For the first time in months she felt something in herself akin to joy." Nerese, we quickly learn, is the Tweetie of Ray's initial story, the 10-year-old who'd been accidentally struck by a stickball bat, her wound staunched with the t-shirt of a mute, shocked Ray who had nothing to do with the accident. Nerese has not had a lot of selfless kindness from the people in her life and now, weeks from retirement, she sees a chance for payback. But Ray won't cooperate. She's sure, despite the severity of his head wound and his semi-dazed responses, that Ray knows his assailant. And Nerese determines to get justice for Ray whether he wants it or not.

The narrative continues to switch between Nerese and Ray, between her investigation and Ray's life during the previous month. Cracks begin to appear in Ray's character. He's not just a former high school teacher who made good in TV land, he's an ex-cokehead who destroyed his marriage, fled fatherhood and messed up more times than he can count. He's a man who has never for one minute been comfortable in his own skin. So how did such a sad-sack get to Hollywood? A bit of luck in his life, a store of goodwill to draw on. Ray likes to say, even think, it was Ruby who got him off drugs, but the truth is less romantic. He likes to think he's a generous, giving man full of good deeds and second chances for those less fortunate, but he's never so self-conscious as when he's watching himself be a do-gooder or showing off his largesse to Ruby. On the other hand, Ray really does like people. He wants to connect, he wants everyone to like him, he takes a genuine interest. He wants to be good. He's soon surrounded by people with various motives to bash his head in.

Nerese is the one for selfless acts, for all the good it's done her. Despite her tough exterior, her no-nonsense firmness and her generally low opinion of humanity, Nerese has a lot of people who depend on her and she comes through for them, while adhering to her solid moral principles. Nerese's dogged police work uncovers evidence; her experience and view of human nature interprets it. At the same time we see how she compartmentalizes her life for safety's sake, how tough love is bedrock truth for her.

In one scene, after she finds a gun on one of her teenage son's friends, she takes her son to visit his cousin in prison, " a field trip to Christmas Future." But inside the prison she realizes she's made a mistake. "What she had interpreted as revulsion was in fact, self-revulsion. Darren - she should have known this - so far from being the type of kid who would ever wind up in a place like this, had spent the last hour and a half surrounded by what his young music-video-molded mind imagined to be REAL men, hardcore to the bone; not constantly scolded mama's boys like himself; and it made him feel like a punk." Before the visit comes off, Nerese drags Darren out, but pauses to deposit money in her nephew's prison account, "by way of apology."

Ray's flashbacks reveal the gaps between Nerese's evidence and reality. Things are not always what they seem; sometimes they're worse. The action of the plot reveals character. As the novel proceeds there are some shocks in store. Wanting to be good, wanting to connect, however briefly, can be selfish, dangerous, harmful. Ray, unlike Nerese, is not a person who weighs consequences, and consequently he runs hot and cold. Unconsciously, he toys with people's lives. Being inside his prickly, jumpy skin is painful, but you still can't help but like him, root for him, hope he lives and wises up. Wry, dark, full of heart and energy, Price's latest grabs and doesn't let go.

Rating:
Summary: Slayer
Review: Half detecive story, half good old fashioned storytelling, Richard Price's latest brilliance is anything but a (near) murder mystery. When Ray Mitchell, an ex-high school teacher, is found beaten nearly to death in his apartment, it is up to childhood friend and veteran cop Nerese Ammons to not only find the assailant, but also to get Ray to tell her what happened. What makes this book so appealing is not simply the complex plot and suspense that comes with a typical detective story, but the way in which Price develops every chracter with care and craftiness. Additionally, Ray's decision not to reveal his attacker or press chargers present a further problem for Ammons, who, along with the reader, must slowly piece together the puzzle bit by bit, chapter by chapter. Price jumps back and forth between the aftermath of the assault and the days leading up to it, providing two intricate stories within one.

Samaritan is so embedded with numerous, important life issues that the reader may forget the main purpose of Ammons's mission. The upmost generosity Ray exhibits serves to further increase the pity felt for him when he is nearly beaten to death. Price explores what happens when Ray places himself secondary to everybody else, from his daughter Ruby to his secret lover, Danielle. Ray is so caught up in the drama of his giving and teaching that he neglects himself and understands all to little about those who surround him. The fact that he is so afraid of the truth in refusing to name his attacker, despite the potential murder, adds a special twist to this already vast and expanded novel.

More surprising than the mystery about Ray's assault is the wonderful stories Ray tells while dipping in and out of consciousness in the hospital. These ramblings can take one way back to the days on a grandfather's lap listening to old war stories and how things were way back when. The fact that Ray mentions these past experiences add to the bond he and Ammons share, and provides a nice break from the continual serach to find the guilty party. Price has nearly mastered this storytelling technique, with the minor exception that, at times, the reminiscing gets a bit tedious and boring. The intriguing combination of the stories and the assualt mystery was a risky endeavour, yet Price has done a great job in interweaving the two seamlessly and calmly. Equally as descriptive are the characters, as not a single person in the novel is overlooked or under-developed. Most are designed to add an angle in Ray's ever-growing return to normalcy, although some serve little or no purpose. Price does a nice job in using language suitable to the respective character, as Ray's students talk like cocky kids and his mentor like an old man. The diction is created to suit the individual, and adds a nice realitic touch to the novel. For the most part, all the characters are intricately crafted and all help to compliment Ray in one way or another.

With that in mind, it is no wonder that Samaritan is a successful novel. The language at times is a bit mature, and some of the topics tackled are definately not suited for children, including some very detailed sex scenes. Yet for those at the high school level and above, this book is a good read. The seldom dull moments and the time it takes for the story to really get moving prevent this novel from receiving its highest score. Yet, one cannot argue with what Price produces, a mixture of great proportions that serve not only to entertain but to teach valueable lessons as well. Ray is the nice guy in all of us, and his story is not simply depressing but shows what can happen when we get caught up in the pleasing of others instead of the care for ourselves.

Rating:
Summary: Not on par with Clockers, Freedomland
Review: Having read the first two books in the Dempsey, N.J., "trilogy" by Price, I was expecting another great read. Samaritan wasn't quite up to par. Why? While the writing was (as usual) great, in retrospect part of what turned me off was that the main character (Ray) was too politically correct in his over-infatuation with the underclass--in this case the many black characters who populated the novel in a somewhat stereotyped way. Look, I'm white and all for racial quality/harmony. But the protagonist Ray was a little too much a bleeding heart. He came off as grinding and unbelievably naive. Actually, very condescending to all the other characters who were black. Maybe that was the book's point! Maybe that's why I didn't enjoy this book as much as the first two. At least in those, all the characters--regardless of race--were treated as equal players.

Rating:
Summary: Really, a perfect novel.
Review: I can't imagine how Richard Price will ever top this truly perfect book. The pace is as fast as a racetrack's but more importantly you recognize parts of yourself in his many beautifully defined characters. Not one is perfect: all are filled with humanity. And the title _Samaritan_ could be placed on each.

Rating:
Summary: add this to the Men's Lit class
Review: I discovered Price after seeing the movie based on "The Wanderers".
In the 70's I told folks that if I ever taught a Men's Lit class Price would be one of the featured authors. Few people write about men and the relationships between males better than Price. With his newest book he heads back to the neighborhood, revisiting the same male landscapes he did in "Bloodbrothers" "Ladies Man" and "The Breaks" Price writes honestly about being a guy, having friends, and the pressure and expectations placed on males in society. I enjoy the way his characters "tell stories" about their lives, families and how they grew up. The oral tradition of sharing tales about that place you call home is universal(for guys anyway) and Price is a master. Hey, it's a great mystery too. Read it and then check out his earlier books. "Ladies Man" is a great book about friendship.

Rating:
Summary: Richard Price stays on target
Review: I eagerly await every book by Richard Price. Samaritan was no exception. I appreciate his consistency - I have never been disappointed in any of his books. His characters always have rich inner lives and his plot line always keep the reader interested. In the back of my head, through the whole book, was the idea that the benefactor most loved by God is anonymous. This book reinforces that lesson. Highly recommended. Those of you who have not read any of his other books are in for a treat.