Reading the blurbs on the back
cover for Samaritan, one would have high expectations.  Stephen King
waxes that "The tension mounts until the story thrums like a wire in a
windstorm," which implies that it is a fast-paced thriller.  Thom Jones
mentions Richard Price in the same sentence as the great literature of the
world.  But in fact Samaritan is a slowly unfolding story about Ray
Mitchell, a Hollywood writer who has moved back to New Jersey.  The novel
starts out with him in hospital after being attacked in his own home, and he
refuses to tell Detective Nerese Ammons who did it.  For much of the book, Ray
lies in the hospital bed drifting in and out of consciousness, replaying the
recent past in his mind, while Nerese interviews the people in Ray’s life
trying to solve the mystery.  Unfortunately, the story lacks dramatic tension
and it is hard to care whodunit.  To be honest, I found it hard to get through
the last third of the novel and lost interest in the characters.    

The central point of interest in
the book is Ray’s return to the old neighborhood in which he grew up.  He loves
to tell stories about his past and soon after his return, he starts meeting up
with his old friends, acquaintances, and their children.  Particularly
interesting are Ray’s feelings about race and class — he has left a life of
relative poverty and deprivation and become successful, but most of the people
from his past face still many problems that stop them from moving on.  Ray
feels guilty about his wealth and success and people seem to play on his guilt
to get him to help them financially.  He also finds a way to help others
through teaching creative writing at a local high school.  The scenes in the
classroom are some of the most powerful in the book, with Ray struggling to
find a way to communicate with the adolescents in the class.  Price manages to
convey the humor and tension of those episodes and the reader wants to get to
know the teens better.  It is disappointing that this part of the plot peters
out with those characters simply drifting out of the story.

Samaritan is distinctive in
its exploration of a writer’s confronting the meaning of his past.  However,
half of the book rests on the figure of the detective Nerese Ammons, and much
of her investigation fails to ignite the reader’s interest.  The storyline
would have been a lot tighter and the book more focused if that half of the
book had simply been dropped.  Readers who enjoyed Price’s previous
semi-autobiographical novels Freedomland and Clockers may be
especially interested in Price’s return to personal themes in this work which
clearly also reflect his own experience.  Other readers may prefer to seek out
Price’s short stories and essays rather than take on this rambling lackluster
novel. 

© 2003 Christian
Perring. All rights reserved.

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also
editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Fiction