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| New England White (Vintage Contemporaries) | 
 enlarge | Author: Stephen L. Carter
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $1.06
You Save: $13.89 (93%)
New (39) Used (52) Collectible (1) from $1.06
Avg. Customer Rating:  61 reviews
Sales Rank: 20678
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 640
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0375712917
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780375712913
ASIN: 0375712917
Publication Date: May 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Book Bent Or Slightly Warped;water damage Buy from the best: 4,000,000 items shipped to delighted customers. We have 1,000,000 unique items ready to ship today!
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Product Description
Lemaster Carlyle, the president of the country's most prestigious university, and his wife, Julie, the divinity school's deputy dean, are America's most prominent and powerful African American couple. Driving home through a swirling blizzard late one night, the couple skids off the road. Near the sight of their accident they discover a dead body. To her horror, Julia recognizes the body as a prominent academic and one of her former lovers. In the wake of the death, the icy veneer of their town Elm Harbor, a place Julie calls "the heart of whiteness," begins to crack, having devastating consequences for a prominent local family and sending shock waves all the way to the White House.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 56 more reviews...
 Interesting but too wordy November 22, 2008
As with The Emperor of Ocean Beach, this book includes much detail about life in upper middle class black society. It is interesting but I find Mr. Carter's books a little wordy. His style invites skimming when the reader hits long descriptions and opinions of little relevance to the plot. The plot was very involved, as was the plot of Emperor, but in this case the characters were not as interesting and likable and believability was stretched for some of their behaviors and situations. The Emperor, I considered a wonderful book while New England White was good but not great.
 Twists and Turns November 11, 2008
A mystery that has many twist and turns that keep you away from the final outcome until the end. This is a murder mystery that has a story interwoven throughout. Making this not just about solving the murder, but, learning about the lives of each of the characters; which brings them to the end.
Complex tale that didn't quite hang together October 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Based on the not-flattering buzz on this book, I was expecting a work far inferior to The Emperor of Ocean Park. I was pleasantly surprised. Carter again shows his perfectly tuned ability to create characters of both races who are believable, his genial satire of the wealthy and famous, and his ability to turn a memorable phrase. The book's length did not bother me, as I enjoyed seeing the main characters encounter each other over and over again, in various permutations and at various levels of risk to each other. Carter's use of anagrams to further his plot, as well as his ability to integrate real American political figures into this novel, were also appealing.
However, I am not convinced that the ending pulled all the disparate threads together and justified Carter's promiscuous deployment of dozens of clues and major and minor characters. For me, the book worked much better as social satire than as a whodunit.
 Fascinating book I couldn't put down October 12, 2008
After reading the mostly negative reviews of this book, I wondered what I would discover. However, I loved the book and couldn't put it down! There were lots of seemingly extraneous characters, devious plot twists, and excessive descriptions of the lives of affluent Black Americans, but all contributed to a good story. I did have trouble with the secret codes and mirrors and references to economic theory and found them distracting.
Now I want to go back and reread THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PART and look forward to more of Steven Carter's writing.
SFT, Florida
 I Could Hardly Be More Disappointed September 21, 2008
After reading Carter's excellent first novel - The Emperor of Ocean Park - I could hardly be more disappointed. His first book set my expectations kind of high, and he failed to provide even a glimpse of the genius that made his first book so enjoyable.
The overall plot itself is improbable, fueled by one improbable incident after another and one preposterous plot twist after another. He showed almost none of the beautiful twists of language he liberally sprinkled in his first book. He recycled some of the characters from his first book, but screwed up some of the chronological history of one of this book's main protagonists. The one area that he improved was that he (or his editor) cut back on some of his excessively meandering passages that were common in his first book.
Overall, a substandard mess. In light of his first book I am tempted to give this one just one star, but if I had read this one first I'd give it a two, so two it is.
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