The character portraits of this book are very telling and finely drawn. Especially poignant was the story of Gary, a man with a plan to leave the Corner by starting his own (legitimate) businesses and investing in stock funds. But the Corner brings him down too in the end as he succumbs to addiction, his brick home becomes a shooting gallery and his wife and children become caught up in the drug culture. Also well done was the portrait of Ella, the community activist without a community, a woman who vainly strives to instill a sense of neighborliness where none exists, where none can exist under the rules of the Corner.
Mr. Simon has no words of comfort and much scorn for both liberals and conservatives. Liberals will find no solace in Simon's disdainful treatment of the educational system as largely irrelevant (as he says "the students pretend to learn and the teachers learn to pretend to teach"). Conservatives will reel from his repeated hectoring that the drug problem is one that will not go away after more arrests or more prisons.
Mr. Simon is a master of nonfiction writing. If you like this book, check out "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets."
