Clockers: A Novel | 
|  | | | Title: | Clockers: A Novel | | Author: | Richard Price | | Publisher: | Picador | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 04 March, 2008 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0312426186 / 9780312426187 | | List Price: | $16.00 | | You Save: | $5.12 | | Amazon Price: | $10.88 | |
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Product Description
Novelist and Academy Award–nominated screenwriter Richard Price's bestselling second novel offers "an unforgettable picture of inner-city decay and despair" (USA Today) At once an intense mystery and a revealing study of two men, a veteran homicide detective and an innercity crack dealer, on opposite sides of an endless war. Clockers is "powerful . . . harrowing . . . remarkable" (The New York Times Book Review).
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Customer Reviews:
• Price's Masterpiece 02 November, 2007
Richard Price started his literary career off strong with his first novel, THE WANDERERS. After that, though, he hit a slump, releasing the pedestrian BLOOD BROTHERS and LADIES MAN, neither of which lived up to the standard Price had set for himself. (In fairness, I have not read Price's fourth novel, THE BREAKS). After turning his attention to screenwriting, Price returned to novels and gave us CLOCKERS. It is not only Price's best work (of those I have read), but an example of just how good the American novel can truly be. It is a spectacular literary achievement that draws its readers into its pages and makes them gasp for breath while swimming through the muck of urban decay found within.
CLOCKERS is an example of what Tom Wolfe refers to as the realistic novel. Although the story is not true, it accurately portrays a subculture of American life in realistic and gripping detail, allowing the reader to vicariously experience that environment through a fictionalized work.
The book revolves around two characters. Strike is a mid-level drug dealer in the slums of New Jersey just outside of New York City. Rocco is a homicide detective investigating a murder in the area. When Strike's brother confesses to the crime, Rocco does not buy it. The brother has never been in any trouble with the law before and the murder does not fit his personality. Suspicion falls on Strike himself instead, with his brother merely acting as the fall guy. It takes away nothing from the dynamic of the book that, although we do not know if the brother is guilty, the reader learns at the murder scene itself that Strike definitely is not.
CLOCKERS switches perspective between Strike and Rocco chapter by chapter, with the reader anticipating the inevitable collision between the two. Despite its length, the book maintains the level of tension necessary to keep the reader's attention. The characters are portrayed in their respective environments and social structures with a stunning degree of realism, allowing the reader to truly empathize with them.
As with many of Price's works, loose ends do not necessarily get resolved. Endings are not all happy. CLOCKERS is no exception to this and, although Strike may be innocent of the crime, his world nonetheless collapses around him. CLOCKERS' world may not be one in which we wish to live, but it is a place we will not forget after experiencing it in these pages.
- Reviewed by customer ID: ABUV8YV3CT669
• Brilliant, Mind Blowing And Extremely Well Researched 09 March, 2008
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.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2INRWK5L40CGY
• Too Heavy For Me 11 July, 2008
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.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3FIXINBQSWDUP
• Exceptional 20 June, 2008
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.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2LYQEY0ZQWWJG
• Beyond Its Genre... 11 May, 2008
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."
- Reviewed by customer ID: A20IF70HGVGE01
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