When an injured woman claims that a carjacker has kidnapped her son, a shrewd police officer and an ambitious young reporter smell a hoax - could the woman have murdered her own child?
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Amazon Review
In Freedomland, Richard Price returns to the gritty terrain he first explored in Clockers. This time, the fictional (but all too convincing) urban eyesore of Dempsy, New Jersey, is convulsed by a high-profile carjacking. A single mom named Brenda Martin insists that a man stopped her car, yanked her from behind the wheel and drove off with the vehicle--and her young son. Behind these horrific facts looms another: the victim is white and the perpetrator is black. Immediately the racial calculus of American life comes to bear on the crime, which becomes a focus for long-smoldering animosities. As a three-ring circus of media, cops and gawkers converges on the crime scene, Dempsy and the adjoining white community of Gannon seem primed for an explosion. Price passes the narrative baton back and forth between Lorenzo Council, an ambitious black detective, and Jesse Haus, a no-less-ambitious reporter for the local paper. Lorenzo's street-smart, agitated voice is the more convincing of the two. Jesse, with her frantic compulsion to squeeze local colour from the crisis, never quite attains three dimensions--though her outsider's relationship to her material suggests some faint, fascinating echo of the author's. In any case, Price allows the story to proceed at an irresistible slow burn. His ear for dialogue is as sharp as ever and nobodycasts a colder or more accurate eye on our fin-de-siècle urban existence.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'A hugely ambitious, searing novel ... Freedomland is a dazzling novel and makes for compulsive reading' Glasgow Herald 'A compelling portrait of America's flipside and a novel that obliges you (as Dickens did) to engage with it ... Not since Toni Morrison's Beloved have I read a new novel with such emotional force' Independent 'Taut and pulsating ... like Steve Bochco writing scripts for NYPD Blue, Price's work patrols the margins of the American underclass' Daily Express 'Richard Price has the soul of a poet, the ear of a screenwriter and the narrative ambition of a classic urban realist. His novels are sprawling, lyrical, down 'n' dirty accounts of those whom the American Dream has passed by' Arena
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you want a fast paced thriller this book isn't for you. It is slow and doesn't really concern with whats in the synopsis, but don't let that put you off. The depth of character and the relationships between the characters bring to life the slums of D-Town. I couldn't stop reading this book not due to the main story line but because of where the characters would end up. And when the story arrives at the institute in search of the little missing boy...fantastic! Read it!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I loved Clockers, liked Lush Life and well... he wrote for the Wire so he doesn't have to earn any stars with me... but this piece was really lacking.
It was slow, very slow and populated with characters who I couldn't quite buy in to - it felt like I was reading a sequence of character portraits or perhaps even his notes from researching and talking with people as he developed this book. In instance in too many sequences character just settle down and tell the reader their back story and why they are doing something, you don't get to learn about the characters so much through their actions or mannerisms but through lengthy exposition.
The dialogue is lacking, it's flat and this is Richard Price. He is the best writer of dialogue or at least of street brogue working today.
I'm not giving up on him as a writer by a long way but I'd swerve this one unless you are a completist.
It was slow, very slow and populated with characters who I couldn't quite buy in to - it felt like I was reading a sequence of character portraits or perhaps even his notes from researching and talking with people as he developed this book. In instance in too many sequences character just settle down and tell the reader their back story and why they are doing something, you don't get to learn about the characters so much through their actions or mannerisms but through lengthy exposition.
The dialogue is lacking, it's flat and this is Richard Price. He is the best writer of dialogue or at least of street brogue working today.
I'm not giving up on him as a writer by a long way but I'd swerve this one unless you are a completist.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I loved this book for several reasons, but mainly for the way that it combines the ability to keep you on the edge of your seat, with real human values and insight. Far too often characterisation is the first casualty of the modern obsession with 'pace' in thriller-writing. This is not the case with Freedomland. Real people do real things and make real mistakes for reasons that we can all relate to, and there isn't the faintest whiff of corniness about any of it. In fact, Freedomland is more than just a thriller- it's too good to be confined to the ghetto of genre, and instead should be given the rightful title of novel, in the old-fashioned and best sense.
The story develops in a very satsifying way and the pace of disclosure is confident, controlled and sensitively handled. The book is highly evocative, and grittily authentic, and Price consistently manages to avoid the lazy cartoonish descriptive shorthand that so many other 'page-turners' indulge in. Characters and situations are described so that you can alomst smell them.
I also really enjoyed the way in which the book had a conscience, and the way in which Price subtly lets his sympathies with the plight of Urban Americans, both Black and White, shine through.
But I would hate for anyone to think that the book is not also just an excellent read, plain and simple. It's sincere, but not 'worthy' and lovers of dense plot will be more than satisfied. Thoroughly recommended.
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3.2 out of 5 stars
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Trying to make the best of a bad job
There is no doubt that Price can write and write well. The characters he creates are well drawn, his descriptions of Gannon and Armstrong and the tensions that rise between the... Read more
Published on 27 July 2006 by Cazza
1.0 out of 5 stars
Blow-by-blow-by-blow-by-blow-by ....
In this attempted tear-jerker of an account of the discovery of the true kidnapper, several hundred pages of the cod action that takes place over the morning, noon and night of a... Read more
Published on 10 Dec 1999 by h_mcgahan@yahoo.co.uk
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