30 Oct / The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
Pulitzer Prized, National Book Awarded for The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead moves a century-plus forward to 1960s Florida, where having darker skin remains crime enough (the contemporary irony looms). J.D. Jackson proceeds deliberately, his narration measured and nuanced, avoiding over-performing through even the most graphic, disturbing passages. His control enhances Whitehead’s relatively spare not-quite-seven-hour story of two boys whose lives intersect at the Nickel Academy, a reform school that proves to be an institution of abuse, torture, and even death.
Elwood, raised by his grandmother, is an academic superstar, an industriously reliable part-time tobacco store worker, a devotee of MLK’s speeches. When being Black in a hitchhiked car banishes him to Nickel, innocent Elwood hangs on to dreams of freedom. Turner, fellow Nickel inmate, has a different story: street-smart, cynical, all-too-knowing, although both boys land in Nickel’s so-called infirmary where they plot to save themselves and too many others like them.
Choosing to go aural provides the privilege of hearing Whitehead read his chilling acknowledgements: “This book is fiction and all the characters are my own, but it was inspired by the story of the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida.” In multiple interviews, Whitehead has discussed his own experiences of being wrongly stopped by the police – and so the long shadows of The Nickel Boys linger on.
Review: “Media,” Booklist Online, October 11, 2019
Readers: Adult
Published: 2019