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the complete review - fiction

The Emperor of Ocean Park

by
Stephen L. Carter

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : has its moments, and quite well written, but presentation fairly weak

See our review for fuller assessment.

  Review Consensus:

  Nothing even approaching a consensus.

  From the Reviews:

• "This book is being marketed as both a thriller and a novel of social commentary. For 657 pages of toneless if plausible prose I waited in vain to be thrilled. (...) This novel has received a lot of hype and the author a lot of money, but I fear it is a case of the emperor's new clothes. Worst of all, there is no sex." - Penny Hueston, The Age
  
  
• "Imagine watching Scooby Doo while reading a thousand op-eds from the National Review. (...) (W)hat's truly exotic about the novel isn't its racial content, but its spiritual content. (...) His trickiest move, though, is making a legal thriller so smart and so silly at the same time." - Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor
  
  
• "Professor Carter has written a dense, competent thriller certainly absorbing enough to carry its weight, but with a portentousness it doesn't really earn and a complexity it doesn't really need." - Sam Leith, Daily Telegraph
  
  
• "His non-fiction indicated, and The Emperor of Ocean Park now confirms, that his prose is competent rather than inspired. (...) Just about everybody will be offended by something or other in The Emperor of Ocean Park. But the book will also make its readers think and laugh. Only the promised thrills are missing." - The Economist
  
  
• "(A) humdinger." - Erik Torkells, Fortune
  
  
• "To read more than a couple of chapters of Carter's lean, measured but in the end curiously decisive prose is to be struck by a kind of moral and intellectual toughness. (...) Inevitably for a work of this length -- and one that relies for its effects on the forensic flourishes of the genre -- it is not without its extended water-jumps and patches of boggy ground." - D.J.Taylor, The Guardian
  
  
• "Not that I disliked this book. There are some terrific set pieces on academia and its discontents, and Carter's vignettes of familial rivalry are first rate. But I was not as impressed with the book as it is with itself." - Graham Caveney, The Independent
  
  
• "(I)n terms of mise en scène and all-round plausibility, The Emperor of Ocean Park lies somewhere south of John Grisham and north of Nancy Drew. It is long-winded, shoddily put together and riddled with repetitions and small inconsistencies" - Lorin Stein, London Review of Books
  
  
• "The Emperor is so rich in detail about a particular segment of American society that it only could have been written with unusual access to the subject and by someone with extraordinary powers of observation and expression. Carter has both." - Jonathan Shapiro, The Los Angeles Times
  
  
• "His writing is assured and well-paced, and he is adept at feeding the reader just enough of the story for you to stay interested. For Carter, the devil is certainly in the detail. He describes each character from heel to chin, and every scene in earnest, as if already directing the film." - James Hopkins, New Statesman
  
  
• "The Emperor of Ocean Park is a delightful, sprawling, gracefully written, imaginative work, with sharply delineated characters who dwell in a fully realized narrative world. (...) In his mastery of atmosphere and the intricacies of plot, Carter deserves comparison with such successful practitioners of the crime novel as Scott Turow, but what sets The Emperor of Ocean Park apart is the sense it provides of introducing us to a world within a world." - K. Anthony Appiah, The New York Review of Books
  
  
• "The Emperor of Ocean Park (...) turns out to be two very different stories. The family drama is a closely observed, often affecting portrait of the Garland clan (.....) The thriller is a contrived, implausible and needlessly baroque melodrama" - Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
  
  
• "But I think it's not much of an exaggeration to suggest that in Stephen Carter the black upper class has found its Dreiser." - Ward Just, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "I’ve already forgotten not only the solutions to half the tedious mysteries Carter lugs around before unpacking them (...) but a lot of the mysteries themselves. The only one that’s really stuck is a sort of meta-mystery: why would a publisher pay $4.2 million to a first novelist manifestly without skills and apparently without gifts ?" - David Gates, Newsweek
  
  
• "Carter's debut novel is an assured combination of almost satirical social observation and thriller that gains much from a setting not often described in modern fiction -- that of upper middle-class African-Americans in Washington and New York. (...) The book is superb, both as a thriller and as a novel of social observation." - Peter Guttridge, The Observer
  
  
• "Ostensibly, Carter's trying to pit his hero against the world and make Talcott's struggle seem truly impossible. But not only does Carter convince us that Talcott's rather lame, the rest of the characters seem directly drawn from the superlatives page of some boarding school yearbook. Rather than drawing out their complexity, Carter presents the sum of their achievements. Imagine all these enormous egos trying to have a conversation; often the dialogue drags." - Suzy Hansen, Salon
  
  
• "If one wanted to build from scratch the book likeliest to confound critics and then sell like hotcakes, Stephen L. Carter's overwritten, overplotted, overlong and oversold legal thriller about the black bourgeoisie is precisely the book one would fabricate." - David Kipen, San Francisco Chronicle
  
  
• "Here is the thing about thrillers: they have got to be thrilling. This was, perhaps, the least thrilling book that I have read so far this year. (...) The structure is clumsy, the dialogue is poor and the characters are flat and stereotypical. But guess what ? Here is the rub: Random House paid $4 million for this dud. (...) This is a bad novel." - Erica Wagner, The Times
  
  
• "Though redeemed in part by its bold attention to important issues, The Emperor of Ocean Park succeeds neither as uber-thriller nor as a dissection of the febrile vanities of upper-middle-class America." - Henry Hitchings, Times Literary Supplement
  
  
• "This reader hasn't inhaled a novel so rich, rewarding and compelling since Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full (...) The mystery aspects had me reading the book at stop signs while driving. And the politics, both of the capital and the law school, are funny, if depressing. But the novel is far, far deeper." - Deirdre Donahue, USA Today
  
  
• "The Emperor of Ocean Park is just about the sort of middling effort one might expect from an intellectual who likes to divert himself with thrillers and thinks he might even try his hand at one himself some day. (...) It is also funereally paced, though blame may fairly be divvied up on that score, since the manuscript appears to have been unsullied by any editor's pencil." - Jonathan Dee, The Washington Post
  
  
• "Wo Schachmatt ein Detektivroman ist, wirkt der Roman gleichermaßen überintellektualisiert wie unterkonstruiert und braucht dann auch noch den deus ex machina, um zu seinem Ende zu kommen. Wo das Buch Thriller ist, steht ihm sein Rest Detektivroman im Weg, und immer wenn Carter seinen Gesellschaftsroman auf den Weg gebracht hat, muss er umkehren, um den verlorenen Thriller aufzulesen." - Wieland Freund, Die Welt

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Before the book, the hype: The Emperor of Ocean Park comes with some baggage and a great deal of pre-publication publicity. The publishers of this book paid a very large amount for it. A staggeringly large amount. And they have high expectations for it (or are creating high expectations for it): in the United States, the first printing is reportedly half a million copies. (Hardcover fiction book sales of that level are achieved by only a handful of titles annually.) All this for a novel by an author who has never published a work of fiction. But Stephen L. Carter is not an unknown entity: he teaches law at a very prestigious school, and he has written several works of non-fiction that have reached larger audiences. Mr. Carter is also -- and this is apparently significant -- black (or African-American or whatever you prefer).
       Expectations are that The Emperor of Ocean Park will be a summer blockbuster for 2002. Will it ? Likely, yes. (Very likely, in fact.) Should it be ? Ah, that's a harder question to answer.

       The Emperor of Ocean Park is, above all, a long novel. It is over 600 pages long; it has well over 200,000 words. And, it must be said, it is, in fact, far too long. Carter rambles very far afield: for this story half the length should have sufficed. There is no question that he has enough material to go on (and on) about, and lots of things to say -- but the basic story (as he presents it) isn't strong enough to sustain so much.
       So what is The Emperor of Ocean Park ? For want of a better description, one might call it a pseudo-Grisham: it is a thriller (of sorts) involving people in the legal profession. (It must be emphasized, however, that Carter writes far better than John Grisham does; of course, we hardly know a published writer who doesn't .....) But Carter also tries to break out of this simple genre with his tome.
       The Emperor of Ocean Park is narrated by Talcott Garland (also called Tal and, confusingly (but, at at least one point, very significantly) Misha) -- a character bearing some resemblance to the author. Talcott is a law professor at a university (an alter-Yale) in Elm Harbor (an alter-New Haven). And, yes, he is African-American. Still, Carter can certainly be believed when he emphasizes in his Author's Note that "the story is just a story, and the characters are my own invention" (with a "handful" of acknowledged exceptions).
       The story begins with some fairly dramatic events that change Talcott's life -- much more, as it turns out, than he might have expected. For one, his father -- the "Emperor" of the title, Judge Oliver Garland, a one time Supreme Court nominee -- dies. For another, his wife, "Kimmer" (Kimberly) -- a practicing lawyer -- finds out she is on the short-list of contenders for a vacancy on the federal court of appeals.
       Oliver Garland's shadow hangs over much of the book. He was an imposing and important figure, and Talcott (like his siblings) hasn't quite come to terms with him. Death doesn't help speed up the process, especially since the judge apparently expected something of Talcott once this day came. Figuring out what exactly his father expects from him is one of the main plot-lines.
       Oliver Garland was a Supreme Court nominee -- but, as that description implies, he did not make it to the highest bench. He withdrew his name after the congressional hearings turned ugly, a blot and shame he never entirely recovered from. Garland was a Reagan nominee (for the seat that Antonin Scalia then got), an unlikely minority candidate proposed by a very conservative ideologue. But Garland was a complicated fellow, and had himself become a poster-boy conservative (and he continued to make a lot of money addressing right-wing groups even after he was disgraced).
       One event above all others -- above even his disgraceful failed nomination for the highest court -- defined the judge as his son knew him: the tragic death of his daughter in a never-solved hit and run accident. This, too, plays a role in the story that unfolds
       Talcott's life isn't picture-perfect either. He is happy enough in his teaching position, and he is the doting father of a toddler, Bentley, but his wife Kimmer is a real piece of work. A high-powered attorney in a too-small town, she spends most of her time working, often away from home. And it sure seems to Talcott that she is having an affair.
       Matters are also complicated by the fact that a colleague of Talcott's is on the same short-list as his wife: Marc Hadley. The judicial-appointment part of the novel is among its more entertaining aspects. It also offers, in its resolution, the one truly satisfying plot-twist in the novel.
       In his position, Carter has been privy to the actual behind the scenes goings-on that surround judicial nominations, confirmations, and appointments -- and the picture he paints is a disturbing one. Neither Kimmer not Hadley seem particularly well-qualified for the position (the federal court of appeals is the big times). Hadley, the academic, has only written one book and that at the beginning of his career, and Carter has him pointedly misstate "both the facts and the holding of the Supreme Court's decision in Griswold v. Connecticut" (as Carter reminds readers in his Author's Note). (Given that Griswold is familiar to every law student this is a particularly glaring mistake; oddly, in that scene Hadley is in the company of many other law professors and no one corrects him (though Talcott notes: "I am silent because I am considering whether to ask my doctor for a hearing test: I do not believe I could have heard all this nonsense right.").) How Hadley ever became (and remained) a law professor is one of the novel's unsolved mysteries.
       One of the most depressing lines in the book comes very early on, as Talcott writes about Kimmer:

She learned some time yesterday that her years of subtle lobbying and careful political contributions had at last paid off, that she is among the finalists for a vacancy on the federal court of appeals.

To the atheist, the cemetery is a place of the dead, vulgar and absurd, ultimately pointless; to the believer, a place of scary questions and terrifying answers.

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Links:

• The Emperor of Ocean Park site (warning: uses the incredibly annoying "Flash"-technology, rendering it almost unusable)
• Alfred A. Knopf publicity page
• Press release
• Article at The Washington Post
• Article at The Observer
• Article at Sydney Morning Herald
• Profile at The Age
• Interview at Identity Theory
• Interview at Christian Science Monitor
• Interview at BookPage

• African American Literature Book Club (1)
• African American Literature Book Club (2)
• The Age
• The Austin Chronicle
• BBC Newsnight
• BET.com
• Fred Betts
• Book
• The Book Barn (1)
• The Book Barn (2)
• Bookreporter.com
• Christian Science Monitor
• Christianity Today
• Curled up with a Good Book
• Daily Telegraph
• The Economist
• Entertainment Weekly (at CNN)
• Esquire
• Exodus
• FindLaw
• The Guardian
• Houston Chronicle
• The Independent
• Legal Affairs
• Litart (German)
• London Review of Books
• The Observer
• The Onion
• The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• Planet Peschel
• The RomerReview
• SNN Student Magazine
• Salon
• San Francisco Chronicle
• Star Telegram
• Sunday Times
• Sydney Morning Herald
• taz (German)
• USA Today
• The Washington Post
• Die Welt (German)

• Faculty page at Yale Law School
• Articles by Carter at Christianity Today
• On the one hand, on the other: Stephen Carter tackles religion by Roger Kimball at The New Criterion

• See Index of Contemporary American fiction at the complete review
• Mysteries and Thrillers
• Thomas Glavinic's more traditional chess-novel, Carl Haffner's Love of the Draw

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About the Author:

       Stephen L. Carter teaches law at Yale University. He graduated from Stanford and Yale and clerked for Judge Spottswood W. Robinson and Justice Thurgood Marshall. He is the author of numerous works of non-fiction.

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© 2002-2010 the complete review

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