The Underground Railroad
Ratings232
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings232
Average rating4.1
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.
Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.
Reviews with the most likes.
Whitehead doesn't let the reader off the hook for a second. Gut-wrenching history mixed with a slight amount of magical realism. I didn't initially think I'd like the character asides, but they gave a deeper window into the actions of characters secondary to Cora.
I enjoyed the book, but it ended to abruptly. I needed to here more of Cora's story.
I feel like I've read a lot of books so far this year that I don't really have any strong thoughts on. This is another one of those. It's well written, but I don't think I was thoroughly engaged while reading through it.
I've had it on my to-read list for awhile and just picked it up because it's been turned into a TV show now and I heard something intriguing about the premise that I didn't realise before that sounded really neat, but ultimately I just thought this was okay. Oh well.
This left me underwhelmed. It's not that it's a bad book - it certainly isn't. I was interested the whole way. I felt a little twist in my stomach and my throat at the end, so I know I was emotionally invested. The writing is good; plain, straight-forward, but tight and with perfectly strong metaphors. The narrative is gripping. The characters internal lives are complex and sustaining. Yet, something left me feeling uninspired. I put the book down and it was out of my head as soon as it touched the table.
Maybe it was that it was too plot-driven, and that's not my type of book: especially when the “almost caught her; didn't catch her... almost caught her again; foiled again!” storyline became wholly implausible, the escapes too narrow, such that it gave the more brutal, very real moments a bit less credibility. Reading this was like watching a movie, where you are always aware that you are in a movie, and also kind of thinking about what you're going to have for dinner. Something failed to captivate me.
But, like I said, it was still a good read and it's always good to remember histories atrocities through narrative, and to keep giving the victims of those atrocities the rich consciousness they deserve.
