Customer Reviews

Fall River Dreams: A Team's Quest for Glory, A Town's Search for Its Soul

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a terrific book. It is well written, has good characters, and explores some interesting cultural topics (high school sports, failing mill towns, youths in America, etc.). Fall River is one of the poorest towns in Massachusetts, but its one saving grace in the early 1990's was its successful basketball team. Life in the town revolved around the team, which provided some hope to some but certainly had negative consequences for many of the athletes and possibly the future of the city. It is a very similar tale to Friday Night Lights, which is probably the best sports book I have read, but is different enough that it is well worth reading. It is also fascinating to read about Chris Herren, who happens to be a classic example of a troubled athlete, before he he made headlines in college and joined the NBA. I really appreciated the focus on the town and the people rather than the actual games, which often dominates books of this genre and just distract from the compelling parts of the book. My only complaints about the book are that it wasn't particularly well edited (I caught several spelling errors that are particularly obnoxious in a mass punlished book, though really don't spoil the story in the slightest) and that it is not quite as detailed as it could have been considering the level of access Reynolds had to the kids and coaches. I would highly recommend this story to anyone and particularly sports fans or people who liked Friday Night Lights.

Fall River Dreams was one of those books you wished would never end! I became immersed in this book, as these characters become a part of you.The star player, living in his brothers'shadow, and the pressure of living up to his legacy of bringing home a state championship. The coach,a legend himself in his hometown, trying to go out with one more championship,and dealing with this 'new breed'of kids. The players, the benchwarmers, and those who seek their own moment of glory. And lastly, the town,that has once seen better days,as it struggles with it's existence all while pinning it's hopes on a High School basketball team, to make it feel that the town still has it's pride, along with their passion for the game! I compare this book to the excellent "Hoop Dreams",as that you both feel for their characters, and find yourself rooting for them. Much has happened to the main character, Chris Herren, from the time Fall River Dreams ends, to the start of his rookie season with the Denver Nuggets. I won't reveal them here. The are documented in excellent articles in author Bill Reynolds column in The Providence Journal. I'm hoping that Mr.Reynolds continues telling us more, with a sequel of the team and the town that captured my heart,soul and passion of hometown sports! This book won't disapoint you!

When I read this book for the first time (I've read it many times, since it is so inspiring), I ended it in the middle of the night, and I still was so pumped up from the emotions of this story, that I wanted to go out and play right now. You may be wondering why I was up all night reading it. I simply couldn't put it down. Living within 20 minutes of Fall River, I have heard of Chris Herren many times. The passion and emotions that come alive in basketball put you in a trance, and this book epitomizes all those emotions and smoothly sweeps them together. I definitely recommend this for anyone who needs the motivation to get up and play. I guarantee it'll be hard not to after reading this book.

This a very capable high school version of John Feinstein's "Season on the Brink," except in Fall River Dreams you dislike the players more intensely than the coach. Readers bear witness to longtime Durfee High School coach Skip Karam losing more and more control over his players as each generation of kids has less integrity, work ethic, and respect for elders than the one before it. High school star Chris Herren was a prima donna whose laziness and insouciance not only prevented him from reaching his fullest potential, but undermined the efforts of the entire coaching staff and supporters, and generally created an atmosphere of discomfort and tension. It's a weird lesson indeed when brash, obnoxious older brother Mike Herren (the team star and league villain from years past) gave pep talks in the locker room when the squad lost.

The book's strength is in its description of the blue collar town of Fall River, both physically and of its history. The decline of the manufacturing industry and towns' many mills cast a palpable gloom over the region. Even though readers from Massachusetts will undoubtedly get greater pleasure from the regional nature of this tale, there are Fall Rivers all over this country- wherever once booming manufacturing hotbeds succumbed to an economic and cultural shift, leaving confused and embittered workers in their wake. Readers will no doubt find parallels wherever they're from. High school basketball was this town's saving grace, and one of its few sources of pride, and Reynolds' writing style illustrated why sports truly matter in places like Fall River.

Comeuppance prevails, and there is a payoff for readers routing against Herren's team, particularly after reading comparisons between the Herren brothers and the diligent, strong-but-silent-type Curley brothers from Duxbury. Fall River Dream's ending kind of fizzles, and earns a mere fraction of space and detail than the rest of the book got; however, it was kind of fitting in view of the dud that Herren proved to ultimately be. Indeed, his star shone most brightly in high school, and slowly burned to a cinder afterwards.

This was one of the best sports books I've read in a while. I really enjoyed Friday Night Lights, and think that this book is it's equal. Thought I am slightly biased, growing up in the Fall River area, and personally watching several Durfee games. But no one can deny the honest and genuine nature of the emotionally charged characters in this story. The relationship between Skippy Karam and Chris Herren is one of a kind. Skip being the living legend trying to go out on top one last time, and Chris trying to live up to all the expectations put on him by the media, colleges, and his family, even though he cleary isn't ready to grow up. The interaction between these two is usually confrontational, but often hilarious as Chris continues to push Skippy to his limit.
Another great character that seems to almost get lost in the mix is Jeff Caron. Jeff is the second best player on the team, but would be a stand out at any other high school in the area. He seems a little jealous at times, but always remains a team player. He is a sort of an outsider among his teammates and the book does a fine job of telling his story.

If you just want the thrills of a succession of basketball games, look elsewhere. But if you want to understand a driven, contemporary high school basketball team from an educationally and economically deprived city with an exceptional basketball tradition, this is a book not to be missed. The author was everywhere, from living rooms to locker rooms to practice courts to games, yet he succeeded in keeping himself invisible in the book. The result is, you are there--for the wise-cracks, the needling, the kids mouthing off to the coach, the college recruiters chasing one of the finest high school players in New England. For a former Fall Riverite, as I am, it's a must-read. For others, there's a lot to be learned here about the thinking and attitudes of the current generation and its interaction with the older generations. If you like to read a book and forget it, this isn't the one for you. Any thoughtful person who reads it will be pondering the problems it presents long after it's back in the bookcase.

This is the less-known but perhaps best of several books about the lure of basketball in the inner city. But where "Hoop Dreams" and "Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams" chronicled the dreams of African-Americans in the major cities of Chicago and New York, "Fall River Dreams" chronicles the dreams of lower-middle class whites in the nowhere city of Fall River, Massachusetts.

I know Fall River, and its depiction in this book is unsentimental and unsettling. This is an author with an eye and an ear for the life of this city, and he writes with a journalist's precision and clarity. Yet what makes this book great is being able to read it now knowing what happened to the book's central subject, Chris Herren. Herren was a can't-miss prospect who ended up missing. Despite some modest success in college and in the pros, Herren did not become the major star everyone thought he would become. His struggles in the book are all the more poignant now that we know what became of his life.

The lesson of all these books is that basketball is not the answer to all of life's problems, even if you are the best of the best. Larger forces can overtake you.

As a Fall Riverite, I am ashamed to have taken so long to read this book. This book is so accurate that it is scary. While the actual writing does lack some luster, it is certainly accurate weaving the city's history with key people, with the history of Durfee High School, and the politics that are still as evident in 2007 as they were in 1993. Chris Herren's basketball career at Durfee is chronicled with foresight as to what eventually did happen, evident to me that the author really did get to know the characters he wrote about because we all know what eventually happened to Chris, the dream that never really came to fruition, almost as if Fall River is cursed and has cursed its residents. Jeff Caron, the kid who was overlooked, according to the author in the book, is currently the coach of Durfee and its AD, taking the place of the everfamous Skippy Karam. Again, after reading the book, Caron's role in Fall River now seems exactly scripted the way Reynolds depicted Fall Riverites, destined to never leave, yearning always for the past. It's a good sports book, it's a good history book, it's a good story. There are some editing issues--spelling errors and misnamed places, but it's mostly annoying if you know that Columbus Park is not "Columbia Park," etc. If you are from the area, you must read! But even if you are not, if you know anything about Chris Herren, you will forever feel for him and his plight. I wish Chris would actually do an autobiography, it could be a lesson for all kids that nothing is a given.

i thought this was a pretty good book. as a sports fan, i did get bored at times with all the descriptions of the city and it seemed repetitive after awhile. but overall, i did find myself not wanting to put the book down in order to find out what the outcome was going to be for durfee and chris herron.

I really enjoyed reading this book, and I am not a big basketball fan. The characters of this book really draw you in, and it makes you realize the pressures that young star athletes live with (and how fast they grow up.) Chris Herron as the lead character of this book is so interesting, it is almost hard to believe he was not created by the author. The highs and lows Herron experiences, and how Reynolds describe them make you feel like you were competing as well. If you can look past the boring 'history of Fall River' sequences at the beginning, you will enjoy this book and recommend it to a friend.