Title: Freedomland

Author/Artist: Richard Price

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Media: Book

Reviewer: Irene Kappes

A friend of mine (a published author many times over ) has recently tried unsuccessfully to get a book published. It has been rejected several times for being “too bleak” or “too depressing”. I cannot help but wonder if those same publishers would have rejected Richard Price’s ‘Freedomland’.

This is the most harrowing book I have ever read. Set in the suburbs of New York, it centres on the disappearance of a four-year-old child, who is reported abducted while out with his mother in the black housing estate area of Armstrong. Armstrong backs onto Gannon, a white stronghold and home of the abducted boy. The book charts the following four days, when Gannon lays siege to Armstrong to supposedly flush out the perpetrator of the crime. Tension and resentment build and the fall-out is depressing. As one character asks, “Can you imagine if, if a black child. A black child from Armstrong had been abducted – was said to have been abducted – somewheres in the city of Gannon. Can you imagine the police department of Dempsy raiding that city in an effort to save that child?” But the author does not succumb to simplistic arguments: the situation itself says it all. The book has complexity and depth, and is well-written and gripping throughout.

A quote on the back cover blurb says that Richard Price’s novels give ‘down ’n’ dirty accounts of those whom the American Dream has passed by’. I’ve not read anything else by this author, but this book goes into my top 10 and I’m off to buy a copy of ‘Clockers’.

And what of my friend’s book? Set on a housing estate in Southwark? Perhaps “too bleak” and “too depressing” should have read “too close too home”.