The Nickel Boys
Ratings261
Average rating4.3
An intense and harrowing story. Very well written and heartfelt. Well done to Colston Whitehead for another powerful novel highlighting the injustice and suffering that occurred in America in the 60s.
De Underground Railroad vond ik prachtig, dit boek viel tegen. Het schetst een onthutsend beeld van jeugddetentie in de jaren zestig (en dan met name voor zwarte jongens). Heeft wel een mooie twist aan het eind, maar is me misschien toch iets te concreet, waar Underground Railroad wat meer “fantasie” had om een moeilijk verhaal te vertellen.
“How to get through the day if every indignity capsized you in a ditch? One learned to focus one's attention”
Such a fantastic book. Every so often you read a book and it can change the way you feel and think. This book is one of those books. I was easily able to give it 5 stars. O had previously read The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead and thought it was quite good but this one really hits you in the feels.
Colson Whitehead is always a challenging author to read due to subject matter but always a pleasant emotional experience even if it is not necessarily a pleasant emotion
Such a fantastic book. Every so often you read a book and it can change the way you feel and think. This book is one of those books. I was easily able to give it 5 stars. O had previously read The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead and thought it was quite good but this one really hits you in the feels.
Colson Whitehead is always a challenging author to read due to subject matter but always a pleasant emotional experience even if it is not necessarily a pleasant emotion
A depressing, juvie version of Shawshank where the innocence and hopefulness of children is used against them and “twist” just makes everything that much more depressing. So hard to read stories like these and know that none of this is in the past AT ALL. But important to read them and carry them with us anyway.
Why the “twist”? I think I would have liked it better to have been a story of modern day Jack Turner recounting the experiences while navigating his current life.
A great example of the right ending clicking things perfectly into place and highlighting the themes in ways that get better the more I think about them. The ending made the book more tragic and less cynical than I expected it to be.
As a general story there are issues I could point at with the light plot, simplistic characters, and detached tone. But as a topical novel shining a light on horrific parts of the past that stays with you after you put it down, it's a great read.
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I recommend reading up on the Dozier School for Boys. just a note: it is very depressing
As most knw by now, this book hits hard. The story is intense, and gives you the constant sense of desperation of knowing that things will not necessarily improve. The author is great in keeping the pace and tone not too heavy, so reading this book is not a chore, but it will definitely make you think. I have now read 3 books from this author and only one “Harlem Shuffle”, wasn't great.
Well-constructed and plotted. Emotionally harrowing; I'm glad it wasn't longer honestly.
Feels more didactic than THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, a mostly fine work calling attention to schools like the Dozier School for Boys and the Canadian Indian residential schools where thousands of graves have been discovered the past few years. It's mostly a tale of perseverance, though it never manages to feel more like a history lesson. Certainly less “literary” than his other Pulitzer book.
Following the Underground Railroad with a book like this is no small feat. That bar was set impossibly high and Whitehead cleared it without breaking a sweat. Good lord what a book.
Everyone that says this will leave you with a punch to the gut wasn't kidding.
Colson Whitehead's story of Elwood Curtis' experience at a boys reform school in the 1960s is both impactful and heartbreaking. In The Nickel Boys Whitehead explores themes of injustice and prejudices during the period of the Civil Rights Movement. There are many references to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr, which inspire the main character's perspective and behavior. The events in the book are shocking, but not surprising to anyone with knowledge of the horrors of that time period in history.
The story follows Elwood Curtis, a black teenager with hopes of attending college and taking part in the Movement. He is greatly impacted by the words of Martin Luther King, Jr, specifically his encouragement to the black community to have a “sense of dignity and...somebody-ness.” This leads Elwood to seek to do the right thing always, even when it may be foolish and put in him in harms way. When he gets an opportunity to attend college classes while still in high school, he is excited and optimistic about his future. However, on his way to his first class, he is arrested for a crime he does not commit and sent to the Nickel Academy, a reform school for troubled boys. At this academy, he experiences abuse and degradation that challenge his ability to maintain his “sense of dignity” that he so values.
The setting of this book, the Nickel Academy, is very grim. The supervisors and “housemen” are mostly hard, abusive men who seek to degrade and demoralize the boys in the school. While the outside of the school appears well-maintained and pleasant, it hides some dark and sinister rooms where boys are abused, both physically and mentally. Elwood seeks to reveal these secrets to the outside world.
Elwood is an idealistic character who believes that he can maintain his sense of self and impact the world if he just does the right thing in every situation. The Nickel Academy will test his idealism. He meets and befriends Turner who is much more realistic about the world and seeks to “get along” and survive. Turner helps Elwood survive the school as much as he can, but Elwood's ideals put him at odds with the school's leaders in several situations. Their friendship is one of the shining elements of this story.
The story line jumps from past to present a few times in the books. We see Elwood and Turner in the 1960s, but we also witness some of the outcomes for characters later in their lives. There is a twist toward the end that is surprising for the reader. Even though there are a few hints at this twist along the way, it took me by surprise. It added an interesting element to the plot.
Overall, this is an emotional read that brings important themes to light. These themes of injustice and prejudice are not new, this book presents them in different perspective and setting than usual. I really enjoyed and learned a lot from this book. I highly recommend it to all readers.
This is an important book - and for that deserves 5stars. But it was so difficult to read, just constant misery - I just needed a little light, a little hope, a little joy to get through.
Heartbreaking and horrifying. The writing is so descriptive it sucks you in and it's hard to let go. A heavy and hard one to read, but I recommend it.
Après avoir lu le bouleversant [b:The Fire Next Time 464260 The Fire Next Time James Baldwin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562890148l/464260.SY75.jpg 1129041] de [a:James Baldwin 10427 James Baldwin https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1343346341p2/10427.jpg], j'ai eu envie de lire d'autres oeuvres sur la question raciale aux Etats-Unis : j'ai alors retrouvé ce roman de Colson Whitehead dont j'avais entendu parler il y a quelques mois et dont parlait très récemment l'émission de radio “Le Masque et la Plume” sur France Inter à l'occasion de la sortie de la traduction française. J'ai tout de même choisi de lire la version originale, pour profiter tel quel du style de l'auteur.Les critiques du Masque et la Plume m'ont un peu gâché une partie du plaisir en dévoilant qu'il y avait une surprise narrative à la fin du roman, ce qui fait que j'ai pu la découvrir avant qu'elle ne soit dévoilée. Qui sait si j'aurais été surpris si je ne savais pas qu'il y avait une surprise ? Le savoir m'a sans doute permis de faire attention à certains détails significatifs auxquels je n'aurais peut-être pas prêté attention sinon.Quoi qu'il en soit, c'est un bon roman, indéniablement. Il nous plonge dans la Floride du début des années 1960, et plus particulièrement dans une maison de correction qui maltraite tous ses pensionnaires, en particulier les noirs, dont certains ne ressortent pas vivants. Le roman s'ouvre de nos jours, avec la découverte des ossements des victimes des décennies passées. Il nous propose ensuite de nous mettre dans la peau d'Elwood, un adolescent noir qui se retrouve enfermé dans cet enfer pour complicité dans un vol de voiture dont il est totalement innocent.Le récit est classique pour ce genre d'histoire, mais cela fonctionne parfaitement. C'est pour moi un éclairage supplémentaire sur le sort réservé aux minorités, en particulier les noir-américains, plus d'un siècle après l'abolition de l'esclavage. J'imagine que d'autres livres abordent ce thème avec plus de force, mais j'ai suffisamment apprécié la prose de cet auteur pour avoir envie de découvrir ses autres romans.
One sentence synopsis... Although extremely well-written and tackling important subject matter (the horrors of a Southern reformatory school for boys in the 1960s) ‘Nickel Boys' left me oddly unaffected by the characters and predictable plot twist.
Read it if you like... tragedies, this one will beat you down and break all idealism.
Dream casting... ‘Stranger Things' Caleb McLaughlin as studious Elwood Curtis and Abraham Attah as his jaded friend Turner.
Digging up Bones of the Past
An excellent story that, while fictional, is based on the true history of the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. Colson Whitehead is an author I'll be reading more of in the future.
Gripping, powerful story-telling by one of the most important and engaging authors of our time.
I don't know what I was expecting, but this was quicker and more shallow than I expected. I had already heard about this story on a podcast so perhaps that made this experience a little less moving. Also, I was expecting a bit more twist from the author of Underground Railroad to make the story his own. I do like that he brought more light on the subject and respect his decision to stay truer to the survivor's stories.
This novel won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for fiction as well as the Kirkus Prize for fiction and the National Book Award for fiction. I approach these type of novels with long lists of accolades like this with trepidation, mostly because I've found I haven't really enjoyed most of them. The same could be said for recent Oscar winning Best Picture movies (I'm looking at you, Green Book) or Grammy winning best albums of the year (I'm glaring at you, Morning Phase by Beck). With the exception of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, I haven't enjoyed many of the recent Pulitzer Prize winners for fiction. They have left me wanting. Until now. The Nickel Boys is fantastic and well-deserves the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. With wide, impressionistic swathes, it paints a harrowing picture of a racist boys institution in Florida during the early to mid-twentieth century, and it does a masterful job in an efficient 200 pages.
Judges of the Pulitzer Prize called the novel “a spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption.” It tells the story of Elwood Curtis, a smart, quiet, and inquisitive Black boy from Tallahassee, Florida, the kind of boy who would read encyclopedias for fun, if he owned a set. But he is also naïve and too easy-going. On his way to college, he hitchhikes in the wrong car, and is sentenced to Nickel Academy for being in a stolen car. There, he befriends a boy named Turner, and their hellish life at the racist school is revealed. Elwood and Turner are very different but ultimately very similar, too, as we learn throughout the book. By the end, you will wonder how they even got that far. Nickel Academy is Hell on Earth.
Whitehead has a marvelously observant eye, as seen here when he introduces Elwood's boss at a local tobacco shop. “Mr. Marconi left his perch by the register as seldom as possible. Squat and perspiring, with a low pompadour and a thin black mustache, he was inevitably disheveled by evening. The atmosphere at the front of the store was stringent with his hair tonic and he left an aromatic trail on hot afternoons. From his chair, Mr. Marconi observed Elwood grow older and lean toward the sun, veering away from the neighborhood boys...” Ever so keen on details, Whitehead also shows restraint at other times, giving sparse but descriptive details, allowing the reader's imagination to fill in some of the horrific events without bogging the reader down in the ugly details. If you're in Hell, what's the point of describing the details of window dressings?? Whitehead can paint a detailed picture with few strokes. Genius.
Whitehead describes Elwood's observations of racism at Nickel as “an indiscriminate spite, not a higher plan.” And that there makes the hellish abuse of Nickel crueler and ever more undeserving to a smart boy like Elwood. He still tries to find the joy in speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. and hopes to find the deliverance of King's promise. But his friend Turner thinks the best thing to do is avoid evil like an obstacle course. What's the best course of action?
There is no better time than now to read The Nickel Boys, a magnificent novel that begs you to stare at the ugliness of racism and demands an empathetic response.
I loved this novel and I highly recommend it. I would give this novel 5 stars.