Customer Reviews: Read 27 more reviews...
 Evolution of an Author August 18, 2008
In a 2008 interview, Richard Price spoke of his evolution as a writer, noting that he'd learned to say more with less. That is, instead of driving home a point four times in four different ways, he'd find the single most effective way to do so, and leave it at that.
Reading CLOCKERS after Price's 2007 novel Lush Life, I can see exactly what he means. CLOCKERS is so convincing in its depiction of urban New Jersey in the 1990s, one imagines that among other things, Price went on dozens of police ride-alongs for research.
That said, after a few hundred pages and umpteen instances where Strike (one of our two protagonists) clutches his stomach, I felt the urge to shake Price's editor and say, "We get it: He has an ulcer!" This isn't to diminish the novel's power; among other things, it features a crime boss named Rodney, who may be the most fascinating literary villain I've run across since... Iago?
CLOCKERS is the rare crime novel that is more successful as literature than it is as a mystery. For a book built around the question of who murdered whom, the answer is a red herring. But as a vivid and muscular account of the big city's underbelly, this is one heck of a book.
Highly recommended.
 Too heavy for me July 11, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This was just too heavy for me. I struggled through half the book before giving up. It is very realistic and saddening but too much detail on every page. I just could not get involved in it, could not sympathise with any characters nor force myself to continue to the end.
Exceptional June 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Beyond brilliant, there is no American writer living or dead who has such perfect pitch, an ear for the language which is infallible. Add that to little details, like real and interesting characters and story, and you better believe Price is the best. He can make you cry.
Beyond its genre... May 11, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Summaries of the "Clockers" plot make it sound like a genre novel, but it transcends genre, even the best of Elmore Leonard.
I wonder whether the wonderful mini-series, "The Wire," was inspired by this novel? It's darker than (even) "The Wire," but the T.V. show's situations and even some passages of dialog echo "Clockers" closely.
This exchange from "Clockers" reappears almost verbatim in the first season of "The Wire." The speakers are Rocco, the homicide detective, and a random "clocker":
"'Let me ask you something,' Rocco squinted up. 'Where do you get those hats with the bills over the EAR like that? Alls I can find are the ones with the bills in front. I looked all over . . . '
The kid shrugged, scowled down at the street. 'All you got to do is turn them them around sideways.' The answer was so straightforward that Rocco couldn't tell if the kid was stupid or just throwing it right back at him."
Brilliant, mind blowing and extremely well researched March 9, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Richard Price first came up with the idea for Clockers whilst sat in a fast food restaurant in New York, during the waning years of what later became known as The Crack Epidemic. Whilst he observed overworked teenage kids sweating behind the counter for minimum wage inside, outside street dealers - in full view of the restaurant staff - made twenty times as much selling Crack.
This posed the seemingly obvious question: What stops the guys inside the restaurant from doing what the guys outside the restaurant are doing? With that question in mind Price set out to research and, ultimately write, one of the finest examinations of 20th century crime ever written.
Set against a modern day equivalent of Hogarth's Gin Lane, rife with crime, privation, and a new form of Mother's Ruin - Crack - Clockers is the story of murder, deceit, prejudice, corruption, and, ultimately, redemption.
While there are some minor inaccuracies concerning the actual drug, it's clear the rest of the book, including the black society in which it is set, was meticulously researched, for which the author should receive recognition - after all it isn't often non-black writers document Afro-America without relying heavily on conjecture.
Slightly dated now, this is still a brilliant, edifying, and educational novel. Top marks.
Oh, and the answer to that question: What stops the guys inside the restaurant from doing what the guys outside the restaurant are doing? Those guys inside have someone's heart to break and they know it - that's why they aren't doing it.
|
