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Guy Patrick Cunningham is a writer and critic living in Hoboken, New Jersey.

New England White by Stephen L. Carter
Reviewed by Guy Patrick Cunningham
Posted: September 17, 2007

A friend of mine used to tell me that the number one thing he looked for in a book was a sense of urgency—that something about a particular story that makes you want to keep reading, even if it’s late and you’ve got work in the morning. Basically he meant a book should give you a clear, definitive reason to keep going. It should demand that you keep going. Contemplating New England White, Stephen Carter’s follow-up to his blockbuster debut The Emperor of Ocean Park, makes me think of my friend.

It took me a long time to read this book. Weeks. (Months? I can’t even remember.) And not because it asks so much of the reader or the prose is too dense. Quite the opposite. This is, at heart, a mystery, a genre meant entertain the reader, help you occupy a couple of hours on a plane. And while not a master stylist, Carter writes well enough—certainly better than, say, Dan Brown. Everything is clear and concise, and the prose is designed to move at a brisk pace. But the novel lacks any sense of urgency. Sure it has a breathless sense of movement, and the requisite cliffhangers at the end of every chapter. But it never penetrates the reader the way a truly great book should, and eventually this turns New England White into a bit of a slog.

Part of the problem is that Carter is divided as to what kind of novel he wants to write. He keeps gesturing at a wider social and political context, but the result is ultimately unsatisfying, because the book’s intellectual aspirations simply don’t mix with its fantastically complicated plot. The reader can’t contemplate, say, the way race and class interact in contemporary society if he is constantly being barraged with vivid chase scenes, complicated word puzzles, and elaborate conspiracy theories. Like a Hollywood film, the book is so overstuffed that it overstimulates the audience to the point of ambivalence.

Carter’s tale centers around Julia Carlyle, Dean at a prestigious New England university that may or may not be modeled on Yale (where Carter is a professor). Julia’s husband Lemaster, the president of that same university, is a personal friend of both the Republican President of the United States as his likely Democratic challenger in the next election, making him among the most influential men in America. Though Julia and Lemaster’s are two of very few African Americans living in their wealthy suburb of Elm Harbor, their lives are at least fairly orderly. That is, until they come upon the dead body of Professor Kellen Zant, colleague to both and Julia’s ex-lover.

Soon, Julia is coming across coded messages Kellen left behind for her—word games, messages hidden in secret envelopes, broken mirrors with secret codes—and she takes it upon herself to investigate his murder. This quickly leads her into an elaborate conspiracy that may or may not implicate one (or both) of Lemaster’s powerful friends in a long-forgotten murder. It has potential, but it never takes off, in part because Carter shifts tone too often.

As Julia digs deeper into Kellen’s murder, she finds herself as an individual. Eventually she questions her marriage, her career, and her parenting. Think of it as therapy-by-way-of-Elmore-Leonard. This self-journey undercuts the hardboiled nature of the novel’s main plot. Passages like: “‘You have no idea,’ said Julia, thrilling secretly to the new her, much more like the old her than the one who shared Lemaster’s bed and board. Semi-Precious was gone. Jewel was back,” are just a bit too Oprah-esque for a book that also features a dog graphically mauling a man’s face.

More frustrating still are Carter’s efforts to make the novel more than a mere genre story.  A great novel excels at exploring the mores of society, and Carter has some interesting observations about the way race and racism subtly shape an individual’s self identity. Julia in particular is troubled by the way her family’s wealth and success have insulated her from the wider African American community. When Carter follows this thread, he begins to impress. It’s as if there is a modest literary tale about the pressures of being black and rich trapped inside a genre tale.

This is most evident in the novel’s strongest sequence, where Julia confronts Theresa Vinney (Miss Terry), mother of DeShaun Morton, resident of a mostly black district of Elm Harbor called “the Nest.” Almost unwillingly, she sees the neighborhood as “a darkly dangerous spot, gangs of sullen hip-hoppers on every corner, ready to flash into violent action at any instant.” This attitude draws a quick rebuke from Miss Terry, who scolds Julia: “You listen to the white folks talk about us, they think everybody in this part of town is a pimp or a whore or using or dealing. Truth is, Julia, most people down here work for a living.”

Miss Terry’s pivot from “the white folks in town” to “Julia” certainly hints at a cultural tension between the two. But as Miss Terry continues, her argument expands, taking what can only be called a conservative Christian viewpoint and wedding it to a view of racial relations usually associated with the radical left:

Well, maybe for the white folks in the suburbs, it’s okay to tell kids to do their own thing, to be themselves, whatever they learn out there. I wouldn’t know. I only know that for our kids, it’s a disaster, Julia. Just a disaster…See, Julia, we’re still on a plantation here. The white folks get to set the rules. The white folks say no God in the schools, so there’s no God in the schools. The white folks say you can’t tell the kids not to have sex, so they have sex. The white folks say you can’t make them feel ashamed if they get in the family way, so nobody feels ashamed. Like I said, the white folks set the rules. And then they get to live in the big house. Down here in the fields? Nobody asks our opinion.

Whether or not Carter means for us to agree with Miss Terry—no one political view is especially favored here—is beside the point. It’s simply refreshing to hear a character in a work of popular fiction speak about race in a way that we don’t usually hear. At the very least, Miss Terry’s speech is intellectually provocative. Unfortunately, it also raises expectations in the reader that the novel cannot fulfill.

There are not enough quiet moments for the reader to simply inhabit these character’s lives and really get to know them, much less try on their politics. Of course, not every reader wants that—there is a pleasure in just following a good yarn. And if Carter had embraced the genre more fully, he might have put together something pretty interesting. But his efforts to make the book something more only slow the reader down. Without enough space to contemplate them, Carter’s social and political observations feel like speed bumps, distracting us from the puzzles and action sequences that dominate the rest of the novel.

It’s not that the book lacks all charm. When Carter puts his head down and lets the action take over, New England White becomes quite fun. One snowbound chase scene is a particular thrill. And when his characters muse on politics, at least the author’s intellect shines through. So this isn’t a book to avoid at all costs; I’d certainly recommend it before The Da Vinci Code, which it somewhat resembles in its mix of pseudo-intellectualism and conspiracy theory. You won’t ever throw it down in disgust. But once you pick it up, there is no overpowering reason to finish it, either.

Copyright © 2007 Guy Patrick Cunningham