By: Richard Price Publisher: Delta Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Delta Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 672 Publication Date: November 29, 2005 Release Date: November 29, 2005
Amazon.com: Actor Joe Morton takes on all the roles of this audiocassette's multicultural cast of characters. His grasp of New Jersey accents, dialects, and inflections is flawless, imbuing all of Richard Price's carefully drawn characters with a gritty sense of authenticity. Morton's crisp, controlled narration propels the story forward with taut, edgy suspense. As he reads, he glides effortlessly from his role as narrator to those of the main characters. Single mother Brenda Martin speaks with a breathy, stammering, and truly fear-permeated voice, while the introspective African American detective, Lorenzo Council, has a clipped, businesslike manner of speaking. Morton takes equal care in bringing to life Price's minor characters, whether portraying a no-nonsense, white New Jersey housewife whose voice has been made coarse by too many cigarettes, or an African American Muslim preacher whose commanding bass voice isn't quite powerful enough to spur his community to action. Morton's greatest achievement, however, is his characterization of Council's jaded, middle-aged white partner, Bump. When Morton slips into the role of Bump, his growling, Jersified Brooklynese is so startling, it almost seems that a life-long resident of Hoboken has stepped into the recording studio and appropriated Morton's microphone. The recording is slightly marred by occasional intrusions of synthesized music that are, for the most part, superfluous and distracting, but Morton's acting abilities and vocal agility are more than sufficient to keep any listener riveted. (Running time: four hours, four cassettes) --Elizabeth Laskey
Product Description: The celebrated author of Clockers delivers his most compelling and accomplished novel to date.
A white woman, her hands gashed and bloody, stumbles into an inner-city emergency room and announces that she has just been carjacked by a black man. But then comes the horrifying twist: Her young son was asleep in the back seat, and he has now disappeared into the night.
So begins Richard Price's electrifying new novel, a tale set on the same turf--Dempsey, New Jersey--as Clockers. Assigned to investigate the case of Brenda Martin's missing child is detective Lorenzo Council, a local son of the very housing project targeted as the scene of the crime. Under a white-hot media glare, Lorenzo launches an all-out search for the abducted boy, even as he quietly explores a different possibility: Does Brenda Martin know a lot more about her son's disappearance than she's admitting?
Right behind Lorenzo is Jesse Haus, an ambitious young reporter from the city's evening paper. Almost immediately, Jesse suspects Brenda of hiding something. Relentlessly, she works her way into the distraught mother's fragile world, befriending her even as she looks for the chance to break the biggest story of her career.
As the search for the alleged carjacker intensifies, so does the simmering racial tension between Dempsey and its mostly white neighbor, Gannon. And when the Gannon police arrest a black man from Dempsey and declare him a suspect, the animosity between the two cities threatens to boil over into violence. With the media swarming and the mood turning increasingly ugly, Lorenzo must take desperate measures to get to the bottom of Brenda Martin's story.
At once a suspenseful mystery and a brilliant portrait of two cities locked in a death-grip of explosive rage, Freedomland reveals the heart of the urban American experience--dislocated, furious, yearning--as never before. Richard Price has created a vibrant, gut-wrenching masterpiece whose images will remain long after the final, devastating pages.
It's wonderful in SO Many Ways - - - BUT..... Undoubtedly, Price is among the most gifted writers I've ever had the priviledge to read. His characters, his dialogue, incredible! Some of the reviewers said "too long" and they're right, I guess... BUT this is such a unique book, it really doesn't matter, unless you're looking to zap thru and speed-read for a "story." Myself, I don't read that way; but the joy is so different from those Can't-Put-Down books -- you CAN put this down and take time to analyze (what would you have done differently? What if this happens, then what?) -- so, while I can understand the discontent among those who criticize, this just ain't a "for-everyone" type books -- and I haven't finished it yet!! Page 581, and still about 70 or so yet to read..... but I'll cherish (or, at least, I THINK I will) the experience of an awfully looooong book, just jam-packed with such amazing insight - - it's great! And I have a few more Richard Price books yet to open - have already read three or four before this - - this guy's an Artist! And I wonder what agony it must have been in crafting it. Thus, if you're not impatient, give it a try.
Slow and agonizing Let me start by saying the book is well written. The dialogue is outstanding. You get a sense of what each character is feeling with the dialogue that is presented. The only problem is that the story never....NEVER.....develops. It is dialogue only. There are so many "side" stories and conversations that you are often subjected to 10-20 pages of "reliving the past". It is novel at first but by the midpoint in the book, I wanted to jab my eyes out.
The story is centered on a "missing" boy and the hunt for that child by a detective and a journalist. Their daily experiences are described in way too much detail and it quickly wears on the reader.
This book would have been outstanding had it been about 300 pages shorter.
Richard Price is Better Than This You cannot hit a home run every time at bat. Still, given that the novel Richard Price published right before this one, specifically CLOCKERS, is not only extremely good but one of the great American novels of its era, it was not unreasonable to expect something at least above average. Life is full of disappointments, however, and FREEDOMLAND is one.
The book takes us into the same urban grit that Price toured in CLOCKERS and that dirty feeling, as if requiring a reader to wash one's hands upon putting the book down, is still there. Yet although Price is a master of creating that vague and ambient atmosphere that leaves one always a little uncomfortable, there is still the matter of the plot. And that is where FREEDOMLAND just comes up short.
Brenda Martin claims that she was carjacked by a black man with her son still in the back seat. This lays the stage for an exploration of racial tensions as the police hit the case. Further complicating this racial angle is that the cop primarily responsible for the search, Lorenzo Council, is himself black and a resident of the housing project where the police believe the suspect most likely resides.
Yet this plot is simply too stereotypical for Price. I am not referring here to the stereotyping of black males, but rather that the plot itself simply seems to lack imagination. There is not enough there to really sink one's teeth into. Price not only provides little else in terms of narrative, but milks this skimpy story for over 700 pages. A book of that length is warranted for the superior CLOCKERS but cannot be justified for a lesser book such as this.
The characters are mostly forgettable. Brenda Martin herself seems to fade into the background. Although this is largely due to the plot itself, especially as her story starts to unfold and her attempt to blend into the background becomes understandable under such circumstances, it nonetheless poses a problem in terms of keeping the reader's attention. Fortunately, Price came back to form with his next book, SAMARITAN, not as good as CLOCKERS but certainly better than this. Consider FREEDOMLAND to simply be a miss and skip it.
It's never taken so much time and effort to get through a day! Whoa! I bought this book because the "idea" sounded great. By 250 pages you are only into the second day...and what a long, boring, tedious, overly descriptive, monotone day it was. The story plods along...no crawls, drops, lays there dying, then a spark of life and it crawls some more only to drop again. I can't stand it. It had so much potential...but only one inciting incident in 250 pages?? These are the longest days I've ever lived. Forget it.
DON'T BOTHER... Never in my life have I wasted such a vast amount of time on such a worthless book. I would have to say this is quite possibly the worst book I have ever read. I am an avid reader and never have I seen a novel with a more transparent plot, "preachy" theme, and gross void of ANY emotional connection with the characters. I believe that it took me about 150 pages to figure out what had happened. The characters functions of pawns of the author. Acting in archetypal patterns to better hit his point home. It was insulting to read. I felt as thought I was being lectured for page after page after page. After having such contrived characters relaying the story to me...I didn't care. I would have enjoyed the book more if all the characters had jumped off a bridge on page 4.
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