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World Hotels - Freedomland
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List Price: $15.00
Our Price: $10.20
Your Save: $ 4.80 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Delta
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385335133
ISBN: 038533513X
Label: Delta
Manufacturer: Delta
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 672
Publication Date: 2005-11-29
Publisher: Delta
Release Date: 2005-11-29
Studio: Delta
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Editorial Reviews:
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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.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Price novices, Start here (I'm guessing)
Comment: I've never read anything by Richard Price before and I was enthralled by this book. I'm usually a pretty slow reader, but I knocked back about 200 pages a day. I could not put this book down. I cancelled (or reluctantly attended) social engagements because of this book. One afternoon my hand went numb twice because I simply neglected to move it while its counterpart was furiously turning pages. The social commentary is astute, and Dempsy was a world I hated to leave. And yes, the other reviewers are right, the dialogue is razor-sharp precise. I felt like I was reading transcriptions of real conversations.
From looking at the other reviews, this is not a favorite among Price fans. So I'm glad I started here. I've already purchased Lush Life, Clockers, and Samaritan, and hope to read them soon. If you're like me, and you've never read anything by Richard Price, I'm guessing this is an ideal starting point: you won't have anything of (evidently) superior quality to compare it to, you won't be disappointed, you'll get a fantastic read and it's only up from there (or so I hope).
Customer Rating:
Summary: It's wonderful in SO Many Ways - - - BUT.....
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Slow and agonizing
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Price's Low Point
Comment: 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.
Better Reads:
Clockers: A Novel, Richard Price
The Wanderers, Richard Price
Customer Rating:
Summary: It's never taken so much time and effort to get through a day!
Comment: 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.
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