The Nickel Boys: A Novel

If my review were to confine itself to the first few chapters, I would be shouting from the rooftops in praise of an intimate look at life as experienced from a student in a reform school in the deep south during the 1960s. The genius of the writer was in getting me into the body shell of a survivor of a ‘school’ that got away with abuse and murder for more than a hundred years. Mind you, it is a novel of fiction, but is based on a real school and is told so well that many will forget it is a work of fiction.However, my review is based on the entire book. Bearing in mind that four stars is high praise, I don’t want you to get the impression that this is not a terrific read, because it is. For many readers, it will, or should become a transformational read. The author doesn’t bludgeon us with horror. Rather, he slips us into the scenes and memories. So, why lower the rating to four stars?It tends to get mired down into sadness and misery. Not in an especially depressing manner, though. Had it become depressing, I would have lowered my rating still further.I guess what I’m expressing is actually almost a confession. I grew up in Southern California in a small town that, during the fifties and sixties, boasted of its ‘success’ in remaining wasp. Most residents would have sworn that they had not a single racist bone in their bodies. They would have decried the segregation and inhumane treatment of blacks in the south. Yet, they took pride in a police force that boasted of picking up men passing through town after working at the local cement factory and releasing them at the town’s boundary with Watts. Yet, that very city went on to survive, even thrive, during integration once the real estate folks were forced to sell without discrimination. It even, for a second time in its history, became an “All American City.”So, what I am getting at is this: Colson Whitehead has put together a narrative, based largely on fact, and weaved us an intimate tale of life, and death, of young men who made mistakes in judgment while pursuing simple pleasures taken for granted by children in more affluent neighborhoods, and who were then punished more severely for their lapses in judgment than were white children guilty of equally poor judgment.Perhaps the brief excerpt will better explain my meaning…BLUSH FACTOR: The eff-word pops up now and then, so you may want to be choosy when deciding to whom you will share this novel. Still, the insight you will gain into life for a young black person growing up in America, especially during segregation will outweigh concerns for language.WRITING & EDITING: Mechanically, first rate editing and the writing is solid.EXCERPT‘…Flipping pages during lulls. Elwood’s shifts at Marconi’s provided models for the man he wished to become and separated him from the type of Frenchtown boy he was not. His grandmother had long steered him from hanging out with the local kids, whom she regarded as shiftless, clambering into rambunction. The tobacco shop, like the hotel kitchen, was a safe preserve. Harriet raised him strict, everyone knew, and the other parents on their stretch of Brevard Street helped keep Elwood apart by holding him up as an example. When the boys he used to play cowboys and Indians with chased him down the street every once in a while or threw rocks at him, it was less out of mischief than resentment.People from his block stopped in Marconi’s all the time, and his worlds overlapped. One afternoon, the bell above the door jangled and Mrs. Thomas walked in.“Hello, Mrs. Thomas,” Elwood said. “There’s some cold orange in there.”“I think I just might, El,” she said. A connoisseur of the latest styles, Mrs. Thomas was dressed this afternoon in a homemade yellow polka-dot dress she’d copied from a magazine profile of Audrey Hepburn. She was quite aware that few women in the neighborhood could have worn it with such confidence, and when she stood still it was hard to escape the suspicion that she was posing, waiting for the pop of flashbulbs.Mrs. Thomas had been Evelyn Curtis’s best friend growing up. One of Elwood’s earliest memories was of sitting on his mother’s lap on a hot day while they played gin. He squirmed to see his mother’s cards and she told him not to fuss, it was too hot out. When she got up to visit the outhouse, Mrs. Thomas snuck him sips of her orange soda. His orange tongue gave them away and Evelyn half-heartedly scolded them while they giggled. Elwood kept that day close.Mrs. Thomas opened her purse to pay for her two sodas and this week’s Jet. “You keeping up with that schoolwork?”“Yes, ma’am.”“I don’t work the boy too hard,” Mr. Marconi said.“Mmm,” Mrs. Thomas said. Her tone was suspect. Frenchtown ladies remembered the tobacco store from its disreputable days and considered the Italian an accomplice to domestic miseries. “You keep doing what you’re supposed to, El.” She took her change and Elwood watched her leave. His mother had left both of them; it was possible she sent her friend postcards from this or that place, even if she forgot to write him. One day Mrs. Thomas might share some news.Mr. Marconi carried Jet, of course, and Ebony. Elwood got him to pick up The Crisis and The Chicago Defender, and other black newspapers. His grandmother and her friends subscribed, and he thought it strange that the store didn’t sell them. “You’re right,” Mr. Marconi said. He pinched his lip. “I think we used toWhitehead, Colson. The Nickel Boys (pp. 22-24). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.BOTTOM LINEReaders who are open to a narrative that deals with sadness and hints of tragedy, but vacant violence and suspense, will probably find “Colson Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys” to be an entertaining, educational, way to gain some understanding of life for your typical black kid during the sixties. The time spent will make the reader the richer for his/her investment.It might not change the world, but, for that reader, it might well change his view of the world.Four stars out of five.

I’ve read 2 of Colson Whitehead’s books now, this one and “Underground Railroad”. HEAVY. I’m glad I read them both, even though the actual experience of reading them was unpleasant. The writing is tremendous. The stories are illuminating - shining a light on a part of American history that is pitch dark and evil.As a middle-aged white guy, I truly have no idea what it’s like to be black in America. What it was like 100 years ago, 50 years ago, or now. I have gained some minimal understanding through Mr. Whitehead’s work. I thank him for that.Highest recommendation - as with Underground Railroad, this should be required reading.

Both the black helpless victims and the white helpless victims.The government of the wealthy people know how to take every advantage of the poor that they are responsible for and cripple them from any worthwhile future or even any hope.Bribes, cover-ups, disappearances, unknown cemeteries, random accidents, bad living conditions, bad food, but great whippings and shootings keep the system operating and the money flowing.History is full of evils of royalty versus slaves and serfs. But the rare victim that understands what is happening and tries to improve to system for those who are mistreated is doomed to be a victim, but maybe somehow can actually save someone.It is amazing what the human body and mind can withstand when motivated. Yet motivation is the first thing that gets taken away.

The Nickle Boys is a powerfully written story. The horror of our past treatment of our citizens, as a country, screams to be heard. While I hated reading about the awful things that happened to these boys because of the color of their skin, I am happy that someone is writing about it. The world needs to hear it.

This is a very interesting book. It is sad and maddening over and over again. The story is one about people being treated as less than human. White people behaving in the worst ways possible because they could get away with it and it helped them to feel superior.

This is my first time reading a book by Colson Whitehead, and it most certainly won't be my last. This beautifully told story shines a much-needed light on the brutality faced by young black men, and how such ugliness shapes them for better and worse. Brilliantly told and an excellent read.

A very powerful story based on real events! Government sanctioned abuse toward young men cast into "the system"!Well worth the journey!!

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's great work, Cancer Ward, features a hospital ward where the patients suffer indignities and restrictions. Slowly the author pulls back and you see the world outside the ward too and realise what's in the ward is a microcosm of what is outside.This book starts with an archaeological dig at a now closed boys' reform school. This is a stroke of genius. The period being disinterred is not some ancient native American site nor white settlers' site from centuries ago; it is a mere fifty years old and brings home the proximity of the crime the book goes on to expose to the light.From the offset The Nickel Boys shows how the Nickel school is a condensed version of America and that the two - school and nation - coexist, each feeding, and feeding on, the same racist poisons as the other. Mr Whitehead has composed an arresting canvas of a "reform" school - no, institution; there is nothing resembling education or reform in the place - run and staffed by sadists with the connivance and sometimes willful ignorance of the " good " local grandees. Corruption by staff and by the beneficiaries of the boys' unpaid labour is rife. The violence is more hinted at than stated so we are left to focus on the moral and societal factors, not distracted by a verbal bloodbath.Elwood, the central character, is a bright and decent boy of African/American descent sent to this appalling institution for an offence for which he did not have the necessary mens rea - he didn't know the car he was being given a lift in was stolen. Noone cared and Elwood, for his first and only offence is sent to Nickel School for reform. He was and remained a moral, free thinking, philosophical, bright kid who rides out his incarceration and sufferings with moral rectitude and a naiive belief in Martin Luther King's exhortation to love your oppressor. He was let down by his parents, by his lawyer and, eventually by the inspection team sent into Nickel School towards the end of the book.Even in this appalling place the black inmates are treated worse than the white, reflecting again contemporary American society.In the closing chapters there is a stunning, moving and wholly convincing turn in the story when… No, I won't spoil it but it will take your breath away.The American English is sometimes a little difficult to follow, but persist; it is appropriate given the characters and their times and society, and really cannot be dispensed with.The Nickel Boys is as good a work of literature and social history as anything I've read from an American author. It must, surely, become a classic.

I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I really don't understand why all the fuss about this book. This year I decided to be a bit more harsh with my book ratings, so this one gets a 3/5. Yes, it talks about the times when the racial segregation was still strong. And it talks about the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reformatory known for its cruelty and few kids that spent some parts of their loves there.It is a story based on similar institutions that were led in 1960's and 1970's, and I do get that some horrible, horrible things were happening at that kind of 'schools at the time'. I really respect Mr. Whitehead to open the topic to the public and start a discussion about what was really happening in America in those years. But I do miss some feelings in this book. Because I'm an emotional reader and to love a book I have to love it's characters, have to feel their emotions and have to care for their actions. And I just didn't have any of it here. Maybe I am weird, maybe I am cold, I don't know. But for me, it felt more like I'm reading a history manual rather than a historical fiction novel.

As so often, the critics have misled me. Bought in advance of release on the strength of the reviews. Long winded and tedious. The presumably true backdrop is grim. The fictional rendering is uninteresting.

Publication day for the long awaited new Colson Whitehead novel, finally arrived!The Nickel Boys is an emotive and thought provoking title. The novel is loosely based around a real life true case of systemic abuse at a borstal type facility in 1960s America. Whilst the novel deals with themes of physical/emotional/sexual abuse, it does so in a sensitive manner. Only using scenes of violence to portray the fear within the boys and the complete and utter control their abusers have over them.The novel is set in 1960s America the fight for civil rights is a backstory within the boys lives. But unfortunately equal rights will not come quick enough for Elwood and Turner. The boys come from very differing backgrounds, although both have known the emotional pain of abandonment and loss. Despite their different out looks on life, they instantly bond at the Nickel Academy. Their friendship will be the only saving grace during their time of detainment.How do you follow-up a title as powerful as The Underground Railroad? How do you ever emulate a title that has had such global appeal and massive success?Colson Whitehead has picked a real life part of history and used it to display how institutional racism gives way to abuse and even murder.Life at the Nickel Academy is one of brutalisation, humiliation and loss of power for the boys detained there. How anyone can ever conceive that this environment would enable young men to make the changes they need, one can never truly know.What the boys need is love, acceptance and a chance to learn. But there is NONE of that at the Nickel Academy.I haven’t included any quotes in this review, as the title is only 208 pages. I raced through them at breakneck speed. leaving no time for note taking. Colson Whitehead has an exceptional way with words and there were many opportunities to quote moving passages.The Nickel Boys is a hard-hitting title which is perfect for book groups, debate and discussion. I have a feeling it will stay with readers for a long time after the closing pages are finally turned!Literary food for the soul, heart and the brain. 4.5*

I read this because I had enjoyed ( if that is the right word) the Underground Railroad. I hesitated because the reviews had spoken of the brutality it included but I decided it was important to know rather than be ignorant of significant events. I very much agree with other reviewers who have said it is disturbing , but well-written and an important addition to the cannon of books about African Americans whose suffering never, ever stopped when slavery was abolished. Good literature is a valid way to highlight this. I found it difficult to read reviews saying this is a political book; what? How would it ever be other? Surely degradation and brutality cannot exist in a vacuum? Of course it’s political and why not. Not all literature is written for escapism and rightly not.Having said that, I found the main character very real; hard to say too much about the plot without revealing the late-on twist, which together with almost everyone else, I didn’t spot. I found it moving and shocking.Based on the two Pulitzer winners so far, I’ll read Colson Whitehead’ s next book like a shot. He’s getting up there with the American greats.