The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction): A Novel

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.

Unlike some, I appreciated the fact that the physical violence and sexual assault was not given in graphic detail. We were given broad strokes of information and the rest was left for us to fill in. That was enough. The book kept my interest and moved along well, except when it side-tracked to give a long back story of a minor character. On occasion the writing jumped quickly from time and place in the same chapter, and I was briefly unsure of which character's voice I was hearing. In addition, like a lot of authors that write stories that cross over many years of a character's life, the chapters began to alternate between the past and the future. Most of the time I think this type of "time travel" is unnecessary because if the story is good enough it can be told chronologically. In this case the twist at the end was not as impactful because it was clear to me what was unfolding. Overall I enjoyed it and it ended on a hopeful note. I'm glad this important story is being told.

This is one of those books that is heart-wrenching and horrible, but it is so well-written that it is amazing. Thankfully, the author doesn't spend lots of time on the grotesque details, but allows the reader's imagination to do the work. The story is excellent, but horrifying. It is a very important book that, from my understanding, is based on the realities of so-called "reform schools." An excellent, saddening work by an outstanding author.

The Nickel Boys exemplifies literary artistry in so many ways that it’s difficult to know where to start praising this masterpiece. Shall I begin by admiring the expertly crafted story structure? Whitehead begins this tale with a snapshot of its gruesome and haunting historical legacy (it is inspired by the horrifying true story of a mid-20th-century Florida “reform school”), proceeds with the story of Elwood Curtis (a promising young Black man who is unjustly ensnared in the juvenile “reform” system and ends up at Nickel, where he suffers unspeakable brutality that is magnified by its banality), jumps forward in time, circles back to the main narrative, and concludes with a revelation that is both unexpected and completely logical. Perhaps I should also mention the superb characterization. Whitehead expertly creates and develops his characters with such deft strokes that even supporting characters become flesh within the space of a sentence or two. And then there’s the flawless prose. Whitehead possesses an almost preternatural command of the language and writes so beautifully of such ugliness that his skillfully ironic style becomes enmeshed in the novel’s themes of injustice, oppression, and astonishing faith in humanity despite all evidence to the contrary. One of the best novels I’ve read in quite a long time.

Excellent read. One of best I have read in years. Keen for my daughter to read it but quite confronting subject matter.

Bella scrittura, inizialmente agile e nervosa, con un'ironia sottile e tagliente. Che poi, però si perde lasciando spazio ad una seria e sacrosanta accusa sociale, contro iriformatori per minori bianchi e neri, che sono luoghi di orrori diversi a seconda del colore della pelle. Se è nera, è peggio anche nell'America dei nostri giorni. Pur condividendo il punto di vista dell'autore, trovo che questo libro politicamente corretto non sia però per nulla innovativo . Mi ha fatto ricordare alcune pagine di Steinbeck, e me ne ha fatto rimpiangere lo spessore letterario.

Produto perfeito e recebido adequadamente.

Wonderful story, to fall in love with Elwood and at then you find what friends are capable of, that is what friendship is about.

Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission here in Canada, we've been dealing with very similar stories from a different point of view. The suffering inflicted on our First Nations brothers and sisters in the last 150 years is unfathomable when viewed from the lens of today's Canadian society. But fear and cruelty are never far away. We look at the madness of the 47th president of the United States, his determination to unsettle us all and betray us, to threaten us with extinction and think, how did we get to this? Colson Whitehead asks the same question. Still we look for a reasonable answer to the wrong question. The better question is how do we look with love and compassion upon those who oppress us with. Trump and his cabal of American oligarchs are a very hard group of men to love. Until we discover how in our hearts we will love the American people who love us. And they are legion. E Kent Stetson, CM.