#50 Palace Council

365 Blog Challenge: Post #50

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

11 days.  That's how long it took me to finish this book.  That in itself is saying something.  I generally read about a book a week, averaging apx 300 pages.  And I find that I pick up speed towards the end of a book.  This book, 510 pages, seemed to drag forever!  Do you know how many Goodreads swap books have come in that time that I want to read??

That being said, I didn't completely dislike this book, written by Yale law professor, Stephen L. Carter.   I picked this book up because Scott and my father-in-law, Steve, really enjoyed it.  Scott was raving about it, and in fact, I found the story itself quite interesting.  The book revolves around the fictional African-American writer, Edward (Eddie) Wesley.  It begins in Harlem in the 1950s, and it gives an interesting account of the wealthy black people of Harlem during that time.  It follows Wesley as the woman he loves, Aurelia, marries another man, and as he discovers the body of a dead, white lawyer, which begins a series of mysterious events that involves the disappearance of Eddie's sister, Junie.  The book is filled with twists and turns once Eddie begins to realize that the death of Phil Castle, the lawyer, and the disappearance of his sister are connected and are associated with Jewel Agony, a radical civil rights group that the FBI is tracking.  The premise is even more complex than this, but it would take me far too long to go into all of it.  The book spans over two decades and includes a bit of historical fiction as certain well known persons appear, e.g. Hoover, JFK, Nixon.

Here's my problem with the book:  While the story is smart and the setting of 1950s-1970s America is an interesting historical time, I felt the writing was a bit flat.  That isn't to say that the writing is poor, but I had a hard time connecting to it.  Certain sentences stood out to me as odd, such as:

"Eddie Wesley opened his eyes from a dream of peaceful eternal darkness to the reality of hard angry whiteness."  

Maybe I need to look past the surface of such a phrase, maybe it's a racial metaphor, but I found it awkward and stiff.  I also don't read a lot of political thrillers and the main reason this one kept my attention is because Eddie is a writer during a remarkable time in American history.

There are people I do recommend this to.  A person that comes to mind is my dad who served in the Navy in Vietnam and was in Millington, Tennessee at Naval Air Station-Memphis (15 miles from Memphis) when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.  I think he'll enjoy such a play on the times, and perhaps will not take issue with Carter's writing.  All-in-all, a decent read, though I don't see myself picking up another political thriller....ever again...