[Review] The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead – 5 stars [Image: Smithsonian Mag]
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“…my motivation to write a book about two black boys in the 1960s just comes from the fact that, historically, America doesn’t care about them” (Whitehead in a Guardian interview).
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This book hurts my soul. It’s a narrative history of a story still true today - the lived experiences of many & it shouldn’t be. I’m really struggling to find words to write an even vaguely adequate review. .
From the first page you’re drawn to the character of Elwood Curtis. He’s a good kid, smart and doing so well at school he’s been given the chance to do university level study. On the first day of class he makes a single bad decision & from there, the situation snowballs. The reader can feel the fear & the anxiety of Elwood. It seems to creep from the page. You want him to do the right thing but you know, through his friend Turner, the right thing will get you a beating in the White House. Too much acting on doing the right thing will have you taken “out back”. Elwood is so earnest your heart breaks for him.
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For all of this fear & anxiety & not knowing which way to turn, the real brutality simmers just below the surface. This, for me, is the real fear. Never being fully at ease. Never knowing when some action, with no meaning or agenda, will earn you a beating. It’s an underlying fear that has no fully formed substance but is no less potent. It’s a fear most readers can empathise with but never have experienced. As Ron Charles, writing for the Washington Post, points out there is no intrusion of the outside world into the Nickel. Elwood & Turner make community service trips into town but the town is outside what the reader is given to experience.
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The Nickel Boys won’t be everyone’s reading cup of tea but I think everyone should read it.

4.5★
“ ‘Sometimes they take you to the White House and we never see your ass again.
. . .
Your family asks the school what happened and they say you ran away,’ Turner said.
. . .
‘It’s not how it’s supposed to be,’ Elwood said.

‘Don’t nobody care about supposed-to.’ ”

Based on a real place, the Nickel Academy is a reform ‘school’ in Florida where young Ellwood accidentally finds himself in the early 1960s. He is a bookish boy who lives with his grandmother in New York City and prizes his album of Dr Martin Luther King’s speeches. His parents took off for California, deserting him, and he wants to know what his place in the world could be, should be.

He studies, works after school, is teased by those who find him a goody-goody, but later is amazed to discover there are others who are demonstrating.

“‘Closer. At the demonstration, he had felt somehow closer to himself. For a moment. Out there in the sun. It was enough to feed his dreams.”

He longs for “reform” but ends up in reform school instead.

“‘Everybody’s here because they haven’t figured out how to be around decent people. That’s okay. This is a school, and we’re teachers. We’re going to teach you how to do things like everyone else.’”

Yeah, right. But ‘teachers’ like this are pretty thin on the ground. Nickel doesn’t suffer just from the usual problems of juvenile detention. Its staff includes good ol’ boys who grew up with pride in pre-abolition South and still resent northern laws.

“Their daddies taught them how to keep a slave in line, passed down this brutal heirloom.
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The sons held the old ways close. The state outlawed dark cells and sweatboxes in juvenile facilities after World War II. It was a time of high-minded reform all over, even at Nickel. But the rooms waited, blank and still and airless. They waited for wayward boys in need of an attitude adjustment. They wait still, as long as the sons—and the sons of those sons—remember.”

Keeping slaves in line involved whips, chains, confinement, starvation, and whatever other brutality those sons of their daddies could dream up when they took the boys to the White House, so-called for its white paint. And it didn’t differentiate between whites and blacks.

Anyone who didn’t survive the beatings or was caught escaping ended up as Turner explained, never seen again.

The whites and blacks are segregated, but Jaime gets shifted back and forth. His mother is Mexican, and he gets dark working in the sun, but sitting with the black boys, he stands out. I would say it is darkly funny, the way M*A*S*H was funny, but he’s just a boy.

Ellwood’s friend Turner, from Houston, seems to have a strong sense of self and a way of fitting in wherever he is. He’s a bit wiser than the country boys, a cynic and a realist who doesn’t share Ellwood’s hopeful view of the future. Knows that nobody cares about “supposed-to”.

Sadly, I wasn’t surprised. The story is too common, brutality too pervasive, and children are still the disposable playthings of men. The world is discovering and uncovering more massacre sites and mass graves and evidence of people left to die, from First Nations peoples to war zones (My Lai) to refugees.

Colson Whitehead has exposed this part of American history in a voice that can’t be ignored. Ellwood is such a bright, earnest youth who deserved to make his mark in the world, and I think Whitehead chose a great way to bring this particular story to a close.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little Brown/Fleet for the preview copy of this excellent book.

Even if I'm the mood for summer light read once I started this book I couldn't put it down.
It's hard to find the right words to describes how I felt, those that come to my mind are powerful and enthralling.
It's like being punched and loving it, Loving the amazing style of writing, the excellent character development and the plot that is enthralling, moving and formidable at the same time.
This is one the best book I read in a long time.
There are books that you can classify 5 stars because they were funny, engrossing or well written. This is a book I would rate 10 stars because it transcends every possible classification except you-must-read-it.
It's not a strongly recommended, it's a you-must-read-it type of book.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

I'm really disappointed that I didn't like The Nickel Boys as much as I thought I was going to. Yes It's an important and timely novel, but I’m afraid so scenes were difficult to read I put this down to my own frame of mind rather than the author’s writing. I can see why this book has so many positive reviews and from what I read I would agree whole heartedly.

Well, this is a punch in the gut. It's official, I love Colson Whitehead. This is a slight, slow-paced novel based on a real boys 'reform' school where rules are unknown and to step over the line results in beatings or worse. Whitehead delivers the story beautiful and the ending ripped my hear tout. This is very different from The Underground Railroad but just as well constructed and important.

I have given this four stars because the story and writing lagged at times for me, but this is a wonderful novel and I would recommend it to all.

‘The Nickel Boys’ opens with the excavation of a hitherto secret graveyard on the Nickel campus where Nickel inmates, killed by their sadistic keepers, have been buried over many decades. From the beginning of the story, Colson Whitehead leaves us in no doubt that the tales from this cruel correctional institution will be terrifying and that, of course, the black boys will suffer far more than their white counterparts.
One such black boy is Elwood, a bookish child, inspired by the speeches of Martin Luther King and ambitious to make his way in the world through education. Mistakenly accused of a crime, he is sent to the Nickel institution where he learns the hard way that justice and truth count for nothing on the campus. However, his belief that some do have faith in a fairer world never leaves him. His friend, Turner, is far more cynical and provides a counterbalance to Elwood’s imaginings, much-needed for survival.
Colson Whitehead leaves us in no doubt of the vile nature of the institution whilst never writing gratuitously of the ways in which the boys are abused. At times, this novel is very hard to read, not because of the words on the page but of the way in which they conjure up brutal imaginings. But, this is a novel that must be read: not only by the American people who own this terrible history (the novel is based on the true story of the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida) but also by all people whose cultures have allowed the vulnerable to be horribly exploited by those who hold power.
Nevertheless, ultimately, ‘The Nickel Boys’ is testament to the power of friendship’s influence and of the possibility of rising above evil, even when lives have become contaminated by society’s engrained racism and casual barbarism. To read it is both to shame us and to uplift us.
My thanks to NetGalley and Fleet for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

We meet Elwood Curtis as a boy, trying to negotiate life as a black person the recently emancipated South. He is a conscientious child, studious and even-tempered. His parents left when he was small, but he has been brought up by his loving grandmother. When he gets an opportunity to study at a local college on a scholarship his life seems set - until being in the wrong place at the wrong time sees him sent to a very different kind of school.
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Tightly plotted, the book follows Elwood through his years at a school where the black students were subject to horrific abuse that often went as far as murder. To say anything more about it would be to spoil the frequent plot developments that had me gasping out loud and at one point exclaiming ‘oh no!’ on the tube, greatly disconcerting my fellow passengers (it’s not done to talk out loud to your kindle on public transport). The writing is pinpoint sharp, the characters and their relationships believable and the events shocking and saddening - particularly knowing, as the author points out in the foreword - that schools with unmarked graveyards such as the fictional Nickel really did exist.
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I’m slightly lost for words to sum up how incredible I thought this was. Way, way better than Underground Railroad. It’s a future classic. Don’t wait, run to the bookshop and read it as soon as you can. Plus of course would be amazing for book club.

An important read and good for those who enjoyed Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra. However, this not only deals with child abuse in the criminal justice system, as Carcaterra’s book does, but it also deals with racism in civil rights era America.

The fact that this book is based on a true story is appalling, horrifying and gave me a real jolt every time I reminded myself of the fact. Wonderfully written but I feel it lacked a little something extra to take the empathy with the characters to the next level. I felt a bit removed from them and that’s a pity.

This may seem strange to say but I wanted to feel more worried about their plight. Perhaps it seemed inevitable though and that’s where my investment was lacking. Even as I write this, I remind myself it is based on a horrific true story and places like this should never have gotten away with the abuse for so long.

I also didn’t see the ending coming, total shocker and really highlighted the narrow edge on which all of our fates stand. I’m not sure the ending fits in with the narrative voice though - I’d need to read again to see.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read this advanced review copy.

It’s startling to realise how much human suffering can be conveniently ignored by the general population when governmental institutions neatly shield this injustice away. Colson Whitehead’s new novel centres around the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reformatory in Florida in the early 1960s. It was purportedly to school and train these teenagers to become “honorable and honest men” but in reality it abused, exploited and (sometimes) killed them. While the civil rights movement was valiantly working to end segregation the boys in this institution were still divided into white and black dormitories. Unsurprisingly, the white inmates were given better food and supplies as well as less labour and better treatment. Whitehead tells the story of this barbaric facility by focusing on the lives of several inmates – most notably an intelligent young man named Elwood who finds himself imprisoned there after he was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like many people I found Whitehead’s previous novel “The Underground Railroad” incredibly moving. This new novel is stylistically different but just as impactful. Not only does it tell a harrowing tale of racism and institutional abuse, but has a gripping plot with a surprising and moving ending.

One of the most heartrending things about this novel is that Whitehead based it on a real institution called the Dozier School for Boys. After this school closed down an anthropological survey in 2012 discovered the remains of dozens of bodies outside the cemetery grounds. Whitehead fictionizes the back stories of several boys who might have ended up in these unmarked graves while also depicting the atmosphere of the civil rights movement at that time. Elwood is a studious young man who aspires to go to college, but finds himself drawn into the protests after being inspired by a record of Dr Martin Luther King’s speeches and his teacher Mr Hill who was a former freedom rider. Through Elwood’s perspective we experience all the conflicted feelings of people had to choose between looking after their own self-interest or joining to fight for a bigger cause. Of course, when he realizes how inhibited his life would be given the current social systems it leaves him little choice because “It didn’t make no sense until it made the only sense.”

It’s incredibly moving how Whitehead depicts Elwood’s good intentions and his stalwart belief based off from Dr King’s words that if he maintains his integrity and diligently works for progress things will change for the better. But this is severely tested when Elwood finds himself locked in the Nickel Academy where there is no reason or justice – only an obtuse system where severe and entirely unjustified punishment can be randomly enacted. He observes “Problem was, even if you avoided trouble, trouble might reach out and snatch you anyway.” The institution is riddled with corruption and incompetence from the administration to the guards to the medical staff. The place is given a lick of paint and congenial veneer whenever any state inspection is due. There’s a sense that over many decades the abuse and prejudice has become so systematic no one in a position of power even thinks to question it.

This is extended further when Elwood and another boy are loaned out to the local population to perform unpaid work as well as deliver governmental supplies to local businesses which were intended to feed, clothe, educate and entertain the incarcerated boys. It meant civilians and businesses outside the institution directly benefited from the maltreatment and suffering of these young black men. In this way Whitehead’s novel makes me question in what ways ordinary people are complacent in the exploitation of others. It’s also a poignant reminder of how brutally people suffered during segregation in America which is something which should be obvious but as one character notes it is “hard to remember sometimes how bad it used to be.” But outside of these larger issues, this is novel which vividly and skilfully tells the stories of several characters trapped in a brutal system in a way which is rousing and memorable.

Light vs Dark, Good vs Evil, Hope vs Despair. It’s rare to meet such absolutes in modern fiction, but The Nickel Boys deals in extremes. It opens with two contrasting images. A little boy gets the “best gift of his life on Christmas day 1962.” A record that never leaves the turntable, gaining scratches, pops and crackles as marks of devotion: Martin Luther King at Zion Hill. An innocent young Elwood Curtis listens with love, and he internalises the optimism and idealism, the grit and stoicism: “Throw us in jail and we will still love you… But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your conscience that we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.”

But just before we meet Elwood, there is a prologue, with a less than optimistic tone. Set in the present day, we learn of a secret graveyard at the site of a former ‘correctional’ school for boys: The Nickel Academy. Archaeology students are clearing the area for property developers, in exchange for field credits, and stumble upon the graves. Bones are fractured, “cratered skulls, the rib cages riddled with buckshot.” The scene is grim, cynical, depressing, bleak.

During the course of The Nickel Boys we get to know both Elwood and The Nickel Academy better, but neither stray far from their initial introduction. Elwood is industrious, moral and, as his friend Turner describes him: “sturdy.” He clings to Martin Luther King Jnr’s teachings and wrestles with what they ask of him, but his idealism remains rooted deep; his integrity is not compromised. The Nickel Academy is as bleak and horrifying as the excavation suggests; a place of misery, deprivation and brutal violence. The supervisors there have no redeeming plot lines or characteristics. There are no slivers of forgiveness for their actions or decisions. It’s good vs bad, with no mud in the water.

A wrong-place-wrong-time decision means Elwood is sentenced to time in the Academy, and it’s the resulting friction between optimism and pessimism, hope and despair that powers the novel. Elwood striving to wear his oppressors down, as Martin Luther King suggested, with his ‘capacity to suffer’; the supervisors at Nickel simply wearing all their charges down, the better to exploit and control them. Elwood’s idealism is subject to a constant grinding pressure. Like the needle on the over-played record; the story we hear playing out is compelling enough by itself, but the added crackle, pop and hiss add a layer of tension that make the novel sing.

This is a quietly powerful book. Understated in the best possible way. After the fearsome brutality and steam punk virtuosity of Colson Whitehead’s last novel — the Pulitzer and National Book Award winning The Underground Railroad — this has a gentler, more philosophical tone. It could almost be described as light; its easy readability belying its political and emotional content. It gives the impression of telling things as they were, laying them bare in all their quiet, affecting sadness. That constant grinding friction between hope and despair is a long, quiet game, after all.

Elwood himself would not approve, perhaps. He likes to make his protests known, and rejects his Grandmother Harriet’s strict adherence to not “acting above your station,” keeping your head down with quiet sadness. She was desperate, instead, to keep him alive. Her father died in jail after an arrest for the Jim Crow offence of “bumptious contact,” her husband was killed breaking up a scuffle between a black dishwasher and three white men, her daughter disappeared with a husband who couldn’t re-adjust back to life in an unforgiving civilian world after the relative equality of the armed forces. As Elwood learns to survive in Nickel, he realises he’s become more like how he’d seen his Grandmother “in less kind moments… He was like one of those Negroes Dr. King spoke of in his letter from jail, so complacent and sleepy after years of oppression that they had adjusted to it and learned to sleep in it as their only bed.” And so his resistance, and the friction, step back up.

Towards the middle of The Nickel Boys the timeline splits, between the characters as children and then later as adults in a modern day narrative, after the students exhume the bones. It’s a relief to be taken out of the claustrophobia of the Florida detention centre and into modern New York. For a fleeting moment in this thread we get to look back on the silent battle of Elwood’s childhood through adult eyes. But he’s frustrated when a loved one can’t see the “big picture.” To him, the “big picture” is just his years at Nickel. For all the years he’s lived since, the only picture he can really see is whether idealism survived, or whether it was crushed, in that dreadful place. To her, it’s “the immense exertion white people put into grinding them down,” — she forgot how bad it used to be, then the story of Nickel reminded her: “It all returned in a rush, set off by tiny things, like standing on a corner trying to hail a cab … [and] by the big things, a drive through a blighted neighborhood snuffed out by that same immense exertion, or another boy shot dead by a cop.”

An adult Elwood can’t zoom out to see what she sees, that under the endless push and pull, the quiet, sad survival in the face of unendurable inequality and tragedy lives on. As to the coin flip of optimism vs pessimism, hope vs despair? After a heart-wrenching and thought-provoking finale, Colson Whitehead closes the final pages of the book with one very clear image, and he might not land the coin on the side you expect.

I have just finished reading this powerful work of historical fiction and now I want to re-read and tell everyone I know to read it. The 'Nickel' of the title is a 'reform' school for boys in Florida. Although this is a work of fiction the story is based on the real institution the Dozier School for Boys. Colson Whitehead has undertaken meticulous research into the institutional abuses at the Dozier and shares the sources for that research at the end of this book. Much has been written in recent years about institutionalised abuse but this novel really gets into the heads of the boys who suffered at the 'Nickel' in the 1960's. At the heart of the story is Elwood, a young black boy who gets sent to the NIckel on a trumped up charge. HIs hero is Martin Luther King and the narrative is peppered with quotes from King, which inspire Elwood's decisions, to the extent to which he has any decision making power. The impact of the Civil Rights movement plays a large part in the plot and we can read how ordinary black people reacted to protest and change, particularly through the character of Elwood's grandmother Harriet. This story works on many levels and is very relevant for today's Black Lives Matter movement when disproportionate numbers of black youth are incarcerated and worse. I highly recommend this superb book.
With thanks to the publisher via Net Galley for providing me with a complimentary ARC of this title in return for an honest review.

Thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and Netgalley for allowing me to read an advance copy of this book to review.

'There was no higher system guiding Nickel's brutality, merely an indiscriminate spite...'

The story is based on the true story of the Dozier School for Boys and introduces us to Elwood, a character who has been well brought up and is very passionate about civil rights after listening to speeches by Martin Luther King.

Despite his upbringing, Elwood ends up in Nickel School for Boys which he understands is a reform school. However, it soon becomes apparent that a lot of bullying and torture goes on at the school. Once the boys are released they still feel the effects of the school.

This book is beautifully and sensitively written but it unfortunately just wasn't for me. I felt that some parts dragged out for longer than necessary and it all seemed slightly detached. However, I was interested to read more about the Dozier School and probably wouldn't have heard about it if it wasn't for this book.

My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group U.K./Fleet for an eARC via NetGalley of Colson Whitehead’s ‘The Nickel Boys’ in exchange for an honest review.

Set in Florida during the early 1960s, Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart. He is very bright and one of his high school teachers has arranged for him to attend some classes at the local black college. However, on his first day an innocent mistake leads to him being arrested and sent to the Nickel Academy.

The Academy claims to provide physical, intellectual, and moral training to equip its inmates to become honourable and productive members of society after their release. Yet the reality is very different. While the Academy houses both white and black boys, they are strictly segregated. All there are subject to stringent rules and severe discipline, yet less resources are made available to the black inmates including food, clothing and housing. The levels of corruption are astonishing.

On his second day Elwood finds a lasting friendship with Turner, a boy who “bobbed in his own pocket of calm....always simultaneously at home in whatever scene he found himself and also seemed like he shouldn’t have been there; inside and above at the same time; a part and apart.” This lyrical description served to bring Turner fully to life for me.

Unlike his multi-award winning ‘The Underground Railway’ there are no elements of magical realism here and it is grounded in a grim reality.

This short novel was inspired by true events that took place at Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. In his Acknowledgements Whitehead gives details of this brutal reform school and how it was exposed as well as online and published accounts.

I am finding it very hard to find sufficient words of praise for this powerful novel. I was inspired and emotionally shaken throughout this intense, multilayered work. It is at times uncomfortable reading given the subject matter.

I expect this to be very quickly heralded as a modern classic. Certainly one that I would expect to be popular in reading groups given its important themes as well as included in literature courses.

It is a novel that I expect to read again to gain a deeper appreciation.

Very highly recommended.

Wow, why can I say, I was totally blown away by this book. It’s combines fiction with a very real subject of the 60’s. This is definitely a book that will last with time and always be at the front of people’s minds.
Elwood is a bright kid who happens to be in the wrong place and the wrong time and is sent to a boys home, here he faces some of the worse abuse possible. Elwood meets turner who is streetwise and shows Elwood how to get through this time at the Nickel. This is proven very hard for Elwood as he begins to understand his world around him and his need to to follow his hero’s believes with the civil rights movement at that time.

This book has all the cliches of prison books and films - the framed innocent, the beatings and sexual abuse, corruption and murder - but the most alarming is that this is based on true events over a 100 -year span at Florida's Dozier School for Boys. Various reforms outlawed certain abuses, but corrupt regimes are always able to find new forms of torture.

This is an excellent book, mixing the messages of Martin Luther King with the protagonist's sufferings, well crafted and very good at capturing time&place. My only complaint, hence the four stars, is the ending. The twist was unnecessary and seemed very disjointed, especially after meeting the old friend in the bar after the marathon. I felt it didn't add to the story, it was just a distraction.

Book supplied by Netgalley for an honest review.

Wow! For a fairly short book this certainly packs a punch! It’s a deeply moving tale, set in the 1960s in the midst of the Civil Rights movement, and based on a real-life reform school in Florida. Elwood Curtis is a young black man inspired by the words of Martin Luther King and determined to better himself when, as a result of one unfortunate bad decision, he finds himself incarcerated in the Nickel Academy, a place of unimaginable violence and horror. There he befriends another inmate, Turner, whose cynicism about life is in ultimate contrast to Elwood’s more idealistic, at times niaive, view of the world.

Beautifully written, without any of the padding that so many writers seems to feel necessary these days, you find yourself drawn into the awfulness that is at times hard to believe and certainly makes you pause for thought - and just when you think you have got your head round that, Whitehead throws you a shocking ending that for me was wholly unexpected but delivered in such a quietly effective way that fits with the manner in which the rest of the book was delivered. It is a book that will stay with me and make me reflect on a moment in American history in my lifetime that is at times hard to fathom.

Thank you to Little, Brown Book Group and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

The Nickel Boys is at times a very hard to read story of Jim Crow Florida in the late 60s, where Elwood Curtis finds himself sentenced to a spell in the Nickel Reform School. Elwood is studious, hard working, and from a good family, singled out because of his grades to attend a new college for black boys in the next door town. He doesn't get there: in a twist of fate that leads him to Nickel. He tries to do the right thing, remembering the recordings of Martin Luther King's speeches he'd heard: "if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption. You just keep loving people and keep loving them, even though they’re mistreating you." He tries, god knows he tries. He confronts, and he sidesteps, and he colludes, and he does whatever it takes to survive. But the consistency of evil, the all pervasive 'this is what we've always done' of the emotional, physical and sexual abuse of the boys who are supposedly there to be rehabilitated, is too strong for him. By the final pages, you're barely breathing. When you discover that Nickel was based on a real place, the grief turns to anger and sadness. The violence is restrained and understated: what you imagine is more horrifying that anything Whitehead sets down on the page. What lives more vividly is the way that the whole world conspires to keep the boys down, in their places, in solitary confinement, in the prisons of their own head even when (or if) they ever leave. The Nickel Boys seethes with anger, and its readers will too.

This is a fictional account of Elwood Curtis and his experience in a Florida reform school encountering institutional racism, cruelty and injustice. Although it is fictional it is - shockingly - based closely on a real iife institution in Florida.

I loved Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad and this new work is, if anything, even better. The author writes with passion and ferocity, the story is truly brutal but gripping. It is unflinchingly direct about the corruption of the system but captures individual characters with warmth and detail. The ending was clever - although whether pure irony or muted optimism I'm not sure. Anyway, highly recommended.

I came to this novel having read its predecessor, The Underground Railroad, last year. That was a superb book but if anything, The Nickel Boys is even better. In some ways, it is a more straightforward book lacking the allegorical elements of The Underground Railroad with which some readers seemed to struggle. It is set in the 1960’s at the height of Martin Luther King’s rise to prominence, but little has changed since the days of slavery and black Americans are still subjected to the most appalling treatment and discrimination.

The novel is set in The Nickel “Academy”, a reform school for young offenders based on a real-life Florida institution. The main protagonist, Elwood Curtis is a young idealist inspired by the words of Luther King and determined to better himself. However, hitching a ride to a college where he has won a scholarship, he is unwillingly picked up in a stolen car, and is sent to Nickel where he is subjected to the most horrendous abuse. He “buddies up” with Jack Turner, a streetwise character with none of Elwood’s ideals, who has learnt not to challenge the system, but to play it. Their relationship and their story forms the bulk of this superb novel, reaching a shattering conclusion with a twist which I defy anyone to guess beforehand.

It strikes me that Colson Whitehead has two great strengths as a novelist. Firstly, he is a superb storyteller. This is a tale which will grip you from the very start and never let you go. Secondly, he has a wonderful grasp of language which allows him to breathe life and vitality into characters and set pieces without having to resort to paragraphs of excessive and unnecessary prose.

I simply cannot recommend this book highly enough. In some ways it is a depressing testament of the treatment of black Americans, which sadly continues today. However, in Curtis and Jackson, Whitehead has created characters who in their own ways are courageous and inspiring and ultimately, at the end of this emotional roller-coaster, I felt uplifted and even hopeful.

This is the best novel I have read in the last few years and I hope it wins every prize going and gives Colson Whitehead the recognition he richly deserves as one of our finest living writers.

There’s no doubting that this is a story some would prefer not told, and though it’s a story that won’t take long to read it is one that will remain with you for a long time.
Our story is about Elwood, a young black boy who grows up conscious of his differences but determined to try to hang onto the things that he has in common with others. From an early age, Elwood showed a fierce determination to better himself and to do the right thing. His desire to learn finds him accepting a lift from someone, and because it’s a stolen car Elwood is sent to the Nickel Centre.
It’s meant to be a juvenile facility but the boys are segregated and, from early on, we see that beatings and abuse are prevalent. Nobody challenges this established order, and it becomes ever harder for Elwood to maintain belief in the words of Dr King.
When he is hospitalised after his first beating (so severe he passes out and is unsure how many times he was hit), Elwood is befriended by Turner. They develop as close a friendship as possible in such an environment, and Turner goes against everything he believes in when Elwood is threatened with being taken ‘out back’.
The two boys run.
What happens next is hard to believe, but this is a story that has to be heard. How such behaviour could be condoned for so long is appalling, and I can understand why Whitehead felt this story needed to be told.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this prior to publication.