Palace Council
by Stephen L. Carter
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Book Summary Information
Author: Stephen L. CarterEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2008-07-08
ISBN: 0307266583
Number of pages: 528
Publisher: Knopf
Product features:
- Set primarily in the years between 1954 and 1974-what Carter calls the "two decades" of the sixties-this political thriller leaves virtually no important person or event unturned.
Book Reviews of Palace Council
Book Review: "Battl[ing] the devils to a draw"
Summary: 4 Stars
Stephen L. Carter's PALACE COUNCIL story of Edward Trotter Wesley Jr. begins in 1952 and spans more than twenty years. Eddie, the son of a respected black preacher, grew up in a culturally and intellectually thriving upper-class Harlem he later captured, to acclaim but also to skepticism in books of his own: When Eddie's fourth novel, NETHERWHITE, was published, "The white critics praised its sharp satiric eye, not realizing that everything Eddie wrote about Harlem he meant literally. The critics did not believe, even after reading the novel, that a wealthy black society actually existed in the secret uptown shadows of their own." Not coincidentally, the same may be said of how law professor Carter's novels -- this one surely -- are greeted.
Eddie, after his youth in Harlem, graduated from Amherst and launched a splashy career as a writer of mostly fiction, about and appealing to the "dark nation," his persistent term for black America. Following the failure to win the hand of Aurelia Treene, "his unattainably highborn girlfriend." he, like another fictional character who is famous for comparing life to a box of chocolates, trawled through our recent history. During the fifties, sixties, and seventies he witnessed key events and encountered notables such as Langston Hughes, J. Edgar Hoover, and Richard Nixon (whom Aurelia knows as "Dick"). Although plot purposes sometimes distort timelines in PALACE COUNCIL, the civil rights struggle, the national turmoil of the Vietnam war, and Watergate served as backdrops for Eddie's colorful life.
These upheavals also formed the impetus for the formation of domestic urban guerrilla organizations such as the real Weathermen and the Black Panthers. Eddie focused on a radical group named Jewel Agony that he feared his vanished law-school educated sister, Junie, had run away to join.
While Eddie, over the years, grasped at any and all clues as to his sister's whereabouts, he was also very busy on other fronts: "Had Eddie Wesley been a less reliable man, he would never have stumbled over the body,..battled the devils to a draw, and helped topple a President." Basically, Eddie's run-in with a prominent white man's corpse set him on an enigmatic hunt to unlock the secrets of an elite cell of powerful men, both black and white. They shrouded themselves in symbolism and were less averse to violence in the name of their shadowy cause than Jewel Agony. Painstakingly, Eddie, in tandem with his true love, Aurelia, pieced together an outline of their long-term plan to somehow reshape American society from the top down. Who, then, belonged to this elite group? What was their agenda exactly? How would they implement it?
Carter's erudite prose and his ambitious plot at first blush ought to anchor this book among the summer blockbusters. Certainly, Eddie, Aurelia, and a few other characters stimulate interest in their plights. Yet, there is room for criticism. For all the words showered on them, they are not fully-rounded. For instance, Eddie is defined as a "great" writer often and rather pompously, yet his creative process is virtually absent from PALACE COUNCIL. And Aurelia seems to reveal her self to the reader quite transparently until something she did blind sides us. Because we do follow her quite intimately, it feels as if Carter has cheated; we thought we knew her, but we did not.
Even though a few plot twists may genuinely surprise, as just mentioned, not all will likely meet with reader approval. To muddy the waters, PALACE COUNCIL remains intentionally ambiguous about some aspects of the conspiracies, resulting in an unfinished quality. And I wish the lesson that Eddie had to swallow about his sister's fate and how she answered his faithfulness could have been more rewarding. I wish President Nixon had come off less like a Tricky Dick caricature, especially since he is portrayed as more civil rights-minded, whether out of opportunism or not, than biographies and histories document. Finally, I wish the book's structure had been tightened.
Nevertheless, Eddie and Aurelia and their labyrinth of a story will remain with me for some time to come. They seek to do right, even when they must sacrifice in that pursuit. They are fitted into a world view and circumstances that do intrigue. They are characters worth getting to know in the pages of PALACE COUNCIL.
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