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Great characters, great book, Jul 12 2004
By A Customer
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.
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grew up in fall river, May 26 2004
By A Customer
This book was well written and told a good story. But i grew up in fall river and know the herrens personally - in other words there is alot more to the herren brothers and fall river than what was mentioned in the book (if you can believe it) but whatever. last I heard Christopher was married with children and doing well. big deal he screwed up. i have. chances are you have. he was a teenager. The one thing i dont get is that 75% of fall river never even heard of chris herren. The author makes a big deal about how important basketball is to the city but its a bunch of crap. good story though if youve never been to fall river. dont get me wrong the majority of the story is true but the man is trying to sell books. you know what ?christopher no longer lives in fall river and thats a dream for most fallrivians itself. basketball got him out of there - thats almost as good as a 25 milliuon dollar NBA contract. good for you chris
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There is a thing called hype, April 23 2004
By A Customer
Fall River is not as poor as the book suggests and it is more diverse than discribed. There are several truths, but nearly as much misrepresentation. The 'alterations' made for a better story, but is insulting to those of us who grew up there in the 80s and 90s.
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A Brilliant, Heart-Breaking Book, April 1 2004
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.
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Read Friday Night Lights, Dec 21 2002
If you want to read a book by a guy who writes a daily column in the Providence Journal thinking he may have found the next Michael Jordan, and following him around a High School then this is it. Bill (...)Reynolds doesn't really know if the kid he follows around is going to the NBA, but he sure wants him too.
Its like he thought that the kid was a sure fire 'can't miss' prospect and he was the guy who was gonna sell a million copies of a book on his hs years.
The cover references ' a teams quest for glory and a towns search for its soul' its neither. Its a boring book that could have been synopsized in two of Bunky's daily columns or one of his numerous appearances on local sports talk radio in Rhode Island talking about basketball. The sad thing is basketball is all that there is in his life. His subjects don't have the same passion. Someone incredibly enthusiastic about kids who have more talent but less desire than the author just dilutes the reader.
If you want a great story about a town then read 'Friday Night Lights' about HS football in Texas. This is a story of a basketball team in Fall River Mass. that follows the same route as Friday Night Lights. It can be boring and long winded. Fall River is dying as a city and the book unfortunately dies pretty near the start.
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Basketball Sociology, Nov 8 2002
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.
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Smaller Version of "Season on the Brink", Sep 25 2002
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.
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Fall River Dreams: A Team's Quest for Glory, Mar 8 2002
I grew up in Fall River and graduated from Durfee High in 1976. This book was so accurate in its descriptions of the city, the schools, the people, it was amazing! Our high schools days revolved around Tues and Sat night basketball games in the old Armory. The basketball players were idolized, the cheerleader were envied. I always had such ambivilant feelings about growing up in Fall River and this book really helped me to understand many of my feelings and why I left and barely looked back. I now have three sons and it made me put the whole "sports" thing in more perspective. There IS life beyond Fall River and basketball!
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Fall River Dreams, Jan 19 2001
my book is called fall river dreams. it is about a players cahnce for glory but his way to getting it.but first i havent read alot of the book so i dont know much but ill tell ya what i know. the main characters are chris herren,skippy karam,mike herren and bob dempsey. chris is the star basketball player for durfee high who went to boston college but then transfered to fresno and now plays for boston celtics.skip karam is his high school coach. mike herren is his older brother who was a star for durffe and went to bc but then droped out because he liked to party to much. bob dempsey was the assitant coach at durfee high. dylan dunne
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The Great White Hope, Nov 2 2000
By A Customer
I was playing high school basketball for Beverly High (MA) when this book came out. Chris Herren had just graduated from Durfee and we all idolized him to some degree. He was a white kid from the burbs, like me, but was a headcase, like me. Everything I dreamed of growing up, Chris Herren became. I read that book right when the state tournament was about to start. We were on our way to play Boston Latin, and I was reading it on the bus while I listened to Wu Tang. It inspired me. ... We ended upupsetting Boston Latin at the buzzer. Beverly's first tourney win in20 years. The book gave me a story to compare my own life to becauseit paralleled it in so many ways. I wish Chris Herren the best with the Celtics. All the white kids in Boston our proud of him.
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