Karen
The other Colson Whitehead books I've read (The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, The Underground Railroad) have all had fanciful, offbeat, or magical realist elements to them, but The Nickel Boys remains solidly grounded in recorded facts taken from a real life Florida reform school and the historical record of what it was like to live as a Black person in the Jim Crow South. The story is told in a more conventional style, but it packs a heavy emotional and intellectual wallop with its portrayal of young Elwood Curtis, a serious and somewhat idealistic student, who is sent to the Nickel Academy after being falsely accused of stealing a car. What happens physically in the reform school is brutal and horrifying, and Elwood observes that what happens to the boys' spirits is equally brutal and horrifying. This book is not easy to read, but meticulously put together and very much worth it.
The other Colson Whitehead books I've read (The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, The Underground Railroad) have all had fanciful, offbeat, or magical realist elements to them, but The Nickel Boys remains solidly grounded in recorded facts taken from a real life Florida reform school and the historical record of what it was like to live as a Black person in the Jim Crow South. The story is told in a more conventional style, but it packs a heavy emotional and intellectual wallop with its portrayal of young Elwood Curtis, a serious and somewhat idealistic student, who is sent to the Nickel Academy after being falsely accused of stealing a car. What happens physically in the reform school is brutal and horrifying, and Elwood observes that what happens to the boys' spirits is equally brutal and horrifying. This book is not easy to read, but meticulously put together and very much worth it.