Loading...
24th out of 43 books
—
11 voters
My rating:
add to my books
Palace Council
“Carter twists plotlines like pretzels while wryly skewering America’s wealthy intellectual elite.” —People
John Grisham called Stephen L. Carter’s first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park, “beautifully written and cleverly plotted. A rich, complex family saga, one deftly woven through a fine legal thriller.” The Chicago Tribune hailed Carter’s next book, New England White, a...more
John Grisham called Stephen L. Carter’s first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park, “beautifully written and cleverly plotted. A rich, complex family saga, one deftly woven through a fine legal thriller.” The Chicago Tribune hailed Carter’s next book, New England White, a...more
Hardcover, 512 pages
Published
July 8th 2008
by Knopf
There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!
sign in »
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
894)
If you cannot get into the characters within the first few pages, you may not enjoy this as the plot is not as engaging as it may seem, and the focuse of the book is to see how the characters interact/develop.
Other reviews here at the site are quite accurate.
Stephen L. Carter is an excellent author his characters are well drawn, real and easy to become interested in. Also, the subject matter of the small, but often influential African American upper class of the 50s'-60's is...more
Other reviews here at the site are quite accurate.
Stephen L. Carter is an excellent author his characters are well drawn, real and easy to become interested in. Also, the subject matter of the small, but often influential African American upper class of the 50s'-60's is...more
view 1 comment
This is a very good book, in many ways a great one.
For me, it was almost too intricate, too finely plotted, for this feeble brain to keep up with! I've spent much of the last week finishing Palace Council as I nurse a bad back, and perhaps my brain is wilted a bit as well.
Palace Council is a long book (over 500 pages). The author's note at the end is also worth reading, because Carter explains little changes he made to history, in order to fit in with Eddie Wesley's journ...more
For me, it was almost too intricate, too finely plotted, for this feeble brain to keep up with! I've spent much of the last week finishing Palace Council as I nurse a bad back, and perhaps my brain is wilted a bit as well.
Palace Council is a long book (over 500 pages). The author's note at the end is also worth reading, because Carter explains little changes he made to history, in order to fit in with Eddie Wesley's journ...more
What a great summer read - a political thriller chock full of conspiracy theories and shady dealings, but told from the perspective of Harlem's upper crust in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. While I consider myself fairly well educated, being white and a native Iowan did not provide me with the best insight into African-American life during the mid-1900s. The world Carter describes is fascinating, and the characters are well-developed and intricate. So while he may be covering some old historical groun...more
Bookmarks Magazine
added it
Oh critics, how ye disagree! Many found Palace Council overly long and complained that the "thriller" parts came and went at random. It's also a bad sign in a genre that depends on flash/bang finales if the ending is considered weak. On a separate note, Edward and Aurelia witness more historical events than Forrest Gumptheir adventures span from Harlem to Park Avenue, Los Alamos, and Saigon, and involve J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, and Langston Hughes, among othersand, covering
...more
I like Carter as an author a lot; he is an African American attorney who sets the stage for A.A. life in the U. S. In this novel the protagonist is Eddie an author who rises to meteoric status as a fiction writer and then a popular essayist for The Nation and The Rolling Stone. He talks to Nixon and other important people of the day. The best thing about this novel, is the depiction of life in Harlem by the A.A. aristocracy, and the movement of people in society. Of particular interest is that...more
Advice to novelists: Never make the protagonist of your novel a novelist, unless you can be sure that the reader would rather be reading your novel than the ones your character has written.
The protagonist of Stephen L. Carter's third novel, Palace Council, is a novelist who by the end of the story has won at least two National Book Awards and is one of the most famous writers in America. Carter is pretty famous himself. He's the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale and th...more
The protagonist of Stephen L. Carter's third novel, Palace Council, is a novelist who by the end of the story has won at least two National Book Awards and is one of the most famous writers in America. Carter is pretty famous himself. He's the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale and th...more
OK, so he can be wordy. Really wordy. But Carter's books are getting better each time.
This book clenched me just after the prologue, because he gets right to the mystery by page 6. I especially enjoy Carter's way of titling chapters "Again the Carpenter" (for example), when a character resurfaces after a gap of time. It's a great way for the reader to go back and remember the last exhange.
If you are new to Carter's books, I suggest to read them in order of publication, because ...more
This book clenched me just after the prologue, because he gets right to the mystery by page 6. I especially enjoy Carter's way of titling chapters "Again the Carpenter" (for example), when a character resurfaces after a gap of time. It's a great way for the reader to go back and remember the last exhange.
If you are new to Carter's books, I suggest to read them in order of publication, because ...more
In the Palace Council, Stephen Carter takes on a long tour of the 1960’s (His definition includes the years 1954 to 1974). Our tour guide is Eddie Wesley, an upcoming African-American (the term changes through the decades) novelist, who stumbles upon a murder and thereby into a multi-generational and indeed multi-racial conspiracy to control the US Presidency. The conspirators as we gradually discover more about them, turn out to have their own wheels within wheels also.
The book gives us a view...more
The book gives us a view...more
Another excellent mystery from Stephen L. Carter, "Palace Council" tells the story of the turbulent 1960s through the eyes of Eddie Wesley, a young black man from upper-class Harlem, and Aurelia Treene, Eddie's first and only love. On the night of her wedding (to another man), Eddie gets embarrassingly drunk and is booted from the reception. Stumbling through the park at night, he trips on the body of a well-known lawyer. Gripped in the man's hand is an inverted cross with a cryptic me...more
Carter is a very literary "legal thriller" author whose books are dense reads about the African-American upper class. This new addition continues the twists and turns of his suspenseful novels. I really enjoyed how he includes famous people such as Nixon and Langston Hughes as some of his characters in this interesting read which spans the years of 1952-1974.
Stephen L. Carter is a Yale law professor and the author of two other novels , The Emperor of Ocean Park and New England White. He writes political thrillers featuring characters of the African-American elite. Palace Council begins in Harlem in 1952. Eddie Westley, a controversial but rising star of a writer, stumbles upon the dead body of a prominent lawyer, Philmont Castle. Hoping to stay out of a potential scandal, Westley suddenly finds himself thrust into a world of secret societies and pol...more
Heavy-going conspiracy. Plan by 20 powerful men to manipulate the US, it tells us on the jacket. Good thing too, because you have to get 400 pages in before you have any idea what the Palace Council might be up to. Writer Eddie Wesley stumbles on a dead body and into a deadly intrigue. Shortly after, his sister Junie disappears, apparently having joined an underground terrorist group. The two events are linked to the Palace Council. Action spans 20 years and includes figures such as JFK, Richard...more
This was really disappointing. Given the plot and setting it really shouldn't have been boring, but I found myself periodically checking my progress through the book and finding that I wasn't as close to the end as I'd hoped. The problem is two-fold, the rather blandly intellectualized and bloodless narrative style which allows for very little expression of emotion or tention (which can be pretty important to this genre of novel), and that I couldn't help feeling that we were watching the seco...more
I've read Carter's two other novels (The Emperor of Ocean Park and New England White), and I think this is the best of the three. The story was gripping, and plot intricate, and the writing was intelligent enough to feel challenging but not over your head. After all the entwining events and characters, the ending seemed to wrap up a little too quickly (which was actually the case in his other novels, too) but I still really enjoyed the read.
I'd give you a little plot synopsis, but I think...more
I'd give you a little plot synopsis, but I think...more
This novel is ambitious and pulled me in from the beginning, but ultimately left me unsatisfied. Perhaps I would have liked it better if I had read it on a beach somewhere, but it certainly did not live up to either of Carter's other novels. This book continues his theme of looking at the racial issues faced by upper class African-Americans, but instead of doing it through the prism of the lives of Ivy League law professors, it uses the prism of a 20-year long conspiracy theory which touches o...more
Started this book while driving in the books on CD version. 18 CDs! But it was so interesting that when I arrived and had not finished it, I downloaded it to our Nook where I am reading it not. Love Stephen Carter; this is a fascinating mystery and excellent reminder (for we boomers) of the history of the US and the civil rights ear from the 1950s onward.
The thing that makes it really interesting for me (other than that I like Carter's intelligent style) is the history of Harlem and ...more
The thing that makes it really interesting for me (other than that I like Carter's intelligent style) is the history of Harlem and ...more
Before I rip on this book, I want to state clearly that I liked it pretty well and I like Stephen Carter's voice.
This book could use a very efficient editor. The plot wanders, and there are too many twists. It makes me think of being a kid sitting in church during the sermon, and the preacher would use his "wrapping it up" cadence, and then plunge right back in and keep going. Palace Council had too many non-climaxes. Also, too many characters. Ultimately, it was con...more
This book could use a very efficient editor. The plot wanders, and there are too many twists. It makes me think of being a kid sitting in church during the sermon, and the preacher would use his "wrapping it up" cadence, and then plunge right back in and keep going. Palace Council had too many non-climaxes. Also, too many characters. Ultimately, it was con...more
I really like this author's work; the story takes place over the course of 20 years, from 1954 to 1974, incorporates a nice blend of fact and fiction. Good mystery, again political intrigue and manipulation, a little more violent than the others that I read. Higher level of personal drama as well, weaving through the plot the story of "star-crossed" lovers, whose romance takes 20 years to bring to fruition. I also liked that he made connections to characters in his other novels, sor...more
one word:
confusing
There are so many characters and the novel spans two decades. I found it really hard to follow and even at the end I wasn't exactly sure what had happened throughout the story. Also confusing was the fact that some of the "characters" are actual historical figures - Kennedy, Nixon, Langston Hughes, etc.
It was still ok, and interesting if you enjoy Carter's first two stories - some of the characters in his earlier novels are "born"...more
confusing
There are so many characters and the novel spans two decades. I found it really hard to follow and even at the end I wasn't exactly sure what had happened throughout the story. Also confusing was the fact that some of the "characters" are actual historical figures - Kennedy, Nixon, Langston Hughes, etc.
It was still ok, and interesting if you enjoy Carter's first two stories - some of the characters in his earlier novels are "born"...more
Once again, the brillian Stephen Carter writes a hard, but rewarding novel in which you learn about upper class African American life as much as you are entertained by the thriller. The plot is so complicated that I won't attempt to explain it, except to say that terrorism, journalism, writing, solidarity, and paranoia play large parts, as does love of one's family, romantic love, and love of/obsession with one's muse. It's an exciting book, with lots going on, and thus not an easy read, but I f...more
Lobstergirl
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Lobstergirl by:
Dumpster
Shelves:
fiction,
got-rid-of
I want to weep with disgust that a book can be so banal, and so long. Reading it was mentally exhausting, and emotionally distressing, because it was so dull, and yet so complicated. It's a murder mystery, a political thriller, a missing persons quest, ranging from 1952 to 1975, among Harlem's black upper class. It has Dan Brown-like elements of conspiracy; riddles are solved with the help of passages from Paradise Lost and Lady Chatterley's Lover. The most annoying thing is Carter's insist...more
Hmm so just dredged through 500+ pages of a novel I wanted so desperately to like but alas couldnt..This book begins with a writer in Harlem that stumbles across a dead body, a bunch of conspiracies and a broken heart..As he attempts to look into the murder his sister goes missing enveloping the book in politics, revolutionary thinking and a whole lot of stretches at the truth..(I dont know for some reason I couldnt see this guy chilling with Langston Hughes, and throwing parties for Lena Horne)...more
Heather
rated it
Recommends it for:
no one - read a better book on the African American topic
Recommended to Heather by:
People
Shelves:
adult
This book was kind of a mess. I've had it on my to-read list for a long time b/c it sounded like a good mystery, and the flap said that the plot started on Martha's Vineyard, so I brought it on my trip there. I read the first 200 pages or so at the beginning of the trip, and then set it aside for the rest of the trip b/c it felt tedious and I just wasn't enjoying it. I wanted, especially on vacation, to read something I actually enjoyed! After I finished another book (the Jodi Picoult one - far ...more
To be honest, I had a little trouble getting into this book by Carter. Had to work a little to keep my interest. But, then the story got going for me and it became an excellent read. It wound up being a great story and I enjoyed it. The characters grow and you learn more about them as the story unfolds. The story line at times seems to falter, but it keeps on going and you pick it up and fo with it. Enjoyed it.
J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'"
J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'"
Not Carter's Best... It was as if instead of integrating American history and historical events naturally into the narrative, Carter worked from a checklist of all the usual suspects one would expect in a novel about the seedy underside of American history... Nixon, Joe Kennedy... et al. The overall effect made the novel seem contrived. The novel was too long, too pretentious and too predictable. Please read New England White instead if you want to read something of value by Carter.
Sarah
added it
This is definitely an entertaining read--it kept me up an hour later than I intended at the close--but I never could suspend my disbelief fully. The protagonist has a little bit of a Forrest Gump tendency to land right in the midst of major historical events which felt contrived. And I don't know if Carter is just a lot smarter than me, but I tend to leave his mysteries going. "Wait. What just happened?" I'm never entirely clear about whodunit.
Jim Thornton
added it
As this book was a gift I would love to say I'd enjoyed it, but in fact it was a grind. An unrewarding grind at that. At the conclusion, you almost say "and....?". It was a struggle this and one that in the final analysis wasn't worth it for me I'm afraid. Perhaps the 'two decade' epic isn't a style for me, but I just felt continually frustrated with the pace and the terminally slow development of the story line. A miss I'm afraid.
This is a political thriller which, according to author Stephen Carter, is also the story of the 60's. Carter actually marks the 60's as two decades: beginning with the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and ending with President Nixon's resignation in 1974. As in The Emperor of Ocean Park, the book also gives a look at upper-crust Black society, in this case the Harlem culture /salons of the mid-twentieth century.
Interesting the way Carter weaves together actual historical events and people with his characters. A few shades of DaVinci Code (a shadowy secret brotherhood, etc.) In some places the characters and story felt like they were too much for the author to deal with. I felt like they weren't as fully realized as they could have been. But it was good. I read Emperor of Ocean Park a ways back, and just picked up New England White. Carter uses the same characters and families in each, but at differ...more
I really like how smart Stephen Carter's books are. He combines mystery with history and explores upper class African American communities that are not widely written about. That said, I found this book a bit slow. It has such a large scope, spans several decades, and has many characters. I had a difficult time getting into the book and caring what happened to the characters. I have enjoyed other Carter books and really wanted to like it but I found it a challenge to finish.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Readers Also Enjoyed
Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale where he has taught since 1982. He has published seven critically acclaimed nonfiction books on topics ranging from affirmative action to religion and politics. His first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), was an immediate national best seller. His latest novel is New England White (Knopf, 2007). A recipient of the NAA...more
More about Stephen L. Carter...
Share This Book
9 trivia questions
More quizzes & trivia...
