Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Day To Day Survival In The Inner City, 8 Jun 2005
A remarkable work of journalism, even exceeding Simon's more famous work 'Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets'.
The reader is taken into a world few of us would dare approach as outsiders but almost immediately we are empathising with most of the characters.
This book is a terrible endictment of inner cities throughout the world, but especially in America. Aspirations are crushed by the surrounding apathy and good intentions drowned by the endless supply of readily available, highly addictive cheap drugs. The complete breakdown of the education system and any sort of meaningful law and order, described and explained by Simon in horrific detail, show that the next generation(s) are doomed to follow the old as avenues of escape are all but cut off.
Yet even among the gun toting teenage gangs, the adolescent mothers and their long term addicted parents and grand-parents we recognise people with potential, those with gentle and friendly natures, those with a wonderful sense of humour, simple people, lazy people, hard-working people - in short, every day characters and personalities we all recognise. But society has failed them, utterly broken down and failed them dismally.
There, but for an accident of birth, goes every one of us.
There are those who continue to care, continue to work to try and bring some sort of meaning to life in the ghetto. Some are saints who, at least for a time, refuse to give up on a cause so lost it is bewildering, while others are just not prepared to recognise the hoplessness into which their own neighborhood has descended.
More than anything this book is a slap in the face for those who say 'I would never let it happen to me, I'd find a way to better myself'. If we're honest with ourselves, if we think back to what influenced us as children - our role models, our peers, our parents, the level of expectation for our future generated by our surroundings - how many of us can truthfully say we could fight our way out of such a situation?
Simon isn't offering solutions, but he does show us why those attempted so far have failed before they even started. However, this book allows us to begin to understand the true nature of the problem and only by first understanding can we hope that one day, perhaps, there may be a solution.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent - Well Written - Realistic... therefore very sad., 8 April 1999
By A Customer
The Corner was given to me by my fiance, who grew up two blocks from the actual 'corner'. Many of the individuals in the book were people he knew from childhood, grade school, the play grounds...I had the opportunity to ask many questions about people like Blue, Fat Curt, Gary, etc. These people became real to me and I was pulling for all of them to make it - to escape - to survive. My fiance left Baltimore for another life - but realizing that he grew up amidst the turmoil and temptation of The Corner - has given me a greater respect for him. He escaped - God help all of those who weren't so fortunate. I highly recommend this book to anyone - but especially to those who have never experienced the harsh reality of the inner city up close and personal. And once you read it, share it with a friend so everyone can come to realize how far this country has to come.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling and shockingly real!, 23 May 1999
By A Customer
I grew up in that neighborhood and many of my relatives still live there today. I believe I'm qualified to say that Simon's portrait of West Baltimore life is extremely accurate. However, the authors could have presented the complete story, Fat Curt wasn't always the soulless junky that Simon highlighted, he had a family and friends, I was one of them. Athletic talents got me out, but what of those that can't shoot a ball, or rap, or those that have to attend a West Baltimore public school. Life is tough in the ghetto, I think everyone knows that. Now Simon needs to write a book of solutions to the problem that he so profoundly explained.
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