'Palace Council' by Stephen L. Carter
BOOK REVIEW
IT'S NO surprise that in "Palace Council," the third of Stephen L. Carter's fables about black America's upper crust, success depends not on what you know but whom. With the right connections -- along with the right bloodlines and education -- a young man has a good chance of going places. The ambitious fellow at the center of this sprawling and occasionally confusing novel has a comparatively modest family background but education and moxie to spare. Edward Wesley Jr., late of Amherst and Brown, "could quote Shakespeare and Dante by the yard, but also Douglass and Du Bois. He could tease. He could charm. He could flatter." So it's almost to be expected when he progresses from a "man on the rise" to an acclaimed novelist and journalist who wins two National Book Awards before turning 40 (the latest for his novel "Pale Imitation").
But, as Billy Dee Williams forcefully declares in that camp classic "Mahogany," success is nothing without having someone you love to share it with. Eddie means to share his laurels with his one true love, Aurelia Treene, or with no one at all. Aurie, who made a memorable appearance as a perceptive septuagenarian in Carter's last novel, "New England White," is first seen here as a lovely twentysomething recently arrived in Harlem. A talented writer who eventually earns a PhD, Aurie is more concerned with landing a rich M-A-N -- a prerequisite for the high society to which she aspires. She spurns Eddie while he is still poor and obscure, instead marrying Kevin Garland, son of a Wall Street player who is "possibly the wealthiest Negro in the United States."
The only other woman with a claim to Eddie's affections is his younger sister Junie, the "only gentle member of a tough, frosty family." Shortly after graduating from Harvard Law School, Junie disappears while traveling cross-country with a friend. Carter hangs his plot on Eddie's obsessive search for his beloved sister, a quest that will eventually span two decades and wind through various danger zones and spy dens, including the White House. Meanwhile, Aurie's brooding, mysterious husband leaves home for weeks at a time, returning periodically to mutter cryptically about a "mess" that Phil Castle, a dead associate, has left behind. I should mention that Castle's corpse, sprawled in a Harlem gutter, had been found by none other than Eddie Wesley.
