Freedomland

Hmmmm....with all due respect, I think some of the other reviewers here are missing the point. You don't pick up a 700+ page novel and not gear up for a long read, and if you know Price at all, you know he's not your standard thriller writer (which is a good thing, believe me). I'm a little mystified by the Price fan that didn't like it though--seems like we were reading two different books. And why see the titles of soul music songs in the book as a tired racial comment rather than the product of a character's completely deranged mind? At any rate, I found Freedomland to be an astounding achievement, with beautifully drawn fully human characters, pitch-perfect dialogue, plenty of action and tension, and a bone-deep sadness beneath it that's miles away from the prickly optimism of Clockers. Unlike Price's recent excellent Samaritan, it's not emotionally claustrophic either--Freedomland is in fact a modern urban epic, rich in character, depth, and texture. This is a book I continually recommend to people who believe that commercial fiction can't stir the soul. I will grant that reading Freedomland can ultimately be an emotionally exhausting experience, but that is what I look for in books--to paraphrase Kafka (at least I think it was Kafka), a book should be the axe that breaks the frozen lake inside us. And Freedomland is a great big axe.

This is one of the most brilliant books I have ever read. Exhausting, draining, exhilarating, infuriating, it touches every emotion in the human psyche. Richard Price is obviously interested in characters, what motivates them, what can make a broken-down woman tell a calculated lie and send an entire city spinning into an inferno. Devastating moral lessons, compelling interactions between chracters of all racial biases and hidden agendas, and an intense, creeping momentum that sends you to the edge and beyond. Price is an exceptional storyteller, a Pat Conroy of the urban slumscape, with images that will stay with me long after the final chapter is read.

I have read both Freedomland and Clockers and I love both books, but Freedomland has a harshness/realism in its message that has stayed with me ever since I read it a year ago. Yes, some scenes are drawn out (When the Dempsy and Armstrong cops are scouting the area where Debra claimed she was carjacked did not have to be thirty some pages, and the search for the boy in the woods was too long). But even during scenes like that it still remained interesting and thought-provoking. One of the great things about Richard Price's writing is that he is able to mix mystery, suspense, urban decay, dialogue so searing and real it encaptures you, and plots and subplots that are climaxed beautifully. But what Richard Price does best is make a story using characters that we normally wouldn't feel any sympathy or respect for, least of all able to send a meaningful message, and do just that. Even after Debra tells the truth about what happened to her Cody, I couldn't help but have sympathy for her. And Jesse and Lorenzo were such tragic characters yet by the end you see them for what they really are, two well meaning people caught up in not only a game, but a life that makes them stern and burnt out and hardened.

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.