User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Five blood freezing, rage boiler, pump squeezer, creator of several lumps on your throat, tear jerker, wake up call for all the injustice, unacceptable, unfair wrongdoings of the system stars!
As soon as I closed the book, I just sat for at least two hours, paralyzed, did nothing, lost, confused, agitated, speechless, deeply, wholeheartedly, painfully sorry for the characters and all the suffering they had to endure. The worst thing is I didn’t read a fiction, I definitely read something based on true stories.
When you’re surrounded by your own choices which make you feel safe and careless and stick to your daily routine, reach out to your own comfort zone,you always tend to forget what happens at the outside! This book makes you remember it with a harsh, vulgar, ugly slap on your face! It makes you remember, outrageous, darkest shameful era of American history.
It starts with Elwood’s story who is smart, who likes comic books so much, who is hard-worker and who has bright future by starting his college education. But everything changed as soon as he found himself a stolen car and accused wrongly as a thief, was sent to Nickel Academy, segregated juvenile, full of racism, torture, abuse, brutality.
Elwood seems like a naïve who still thinks he could fight against injustice, corruption, repression in the school. As soon as he meets with cynical, smart, practical Turner who finds his partner in crime to survive in this jungle.
You can find the great balance and mash-up of many produced, perfect stories of injustice in this book starting from “Kill a Mockingbird”, “Fruitvale Station”, “ Do the right thing”, “When They See Us”, “Shawshank Redemption”.
If you could survive after reading brutal, aggressive, raw, raging things that the characters endured and fought against by sharpening their survival skills and have a good stomach to absorb the details you’re gonna read because there are so many truths hidden inside between the lines, this book is great way to face the other side of frightening human history that encourages you do something by raising your voice and stop acting like three wise monkeys by opening your eyes!
The ending was another surprise and gut wrenching twist knocks you out!
I wanted to finish my review with the remarkable words of Martin Luther King Jr’s quote:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”
Sigh… Sigh…Sigh… I think I will continue to sit, speechless, lost, shaken, angsty, sad…I need more time to absorb what I’ve just read!
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Rating: really liked it
I loved this novel. It is rich with detail, the plot twists in a really interesting way, the novel's structure is pretty brilliant and overall, this is an ambitious book that was really well executed. It is a coming of age story where that coming of age is warped by the atrocities of a school for boys in segregated Florida. As Elwood awakens to the civil rights movement, he is stripped of nearly all his rights. The more he understands the freedom he deserves, the less freedom he has and that juxtaposition drives this remarkable novel.
At times, there were bits of prose that felt a bit, half-hearted, like filler until he got to the part he was more interested in. I would have given this five stars but Whitehead uses cement instead of concrete at least 7 times. I stopped counting after 7 times because it was too upsetting. Cement, water, and aggregates make concrete! Cement and concrete are not synonyms. Why do copyeditors not catch this? WHY? Anyway, great novel. People are going to love this one. BUT STILL! CEMENT IS NOT CONCRETE.
Rating: really liked it
with a tightly plotted and masterfully crafted story, this book absolutely demands to be read. i can only say that i think it would have benefitted from a less nonfiction-esque writing style at times, but even with my writing preferences i definitely see why this has received so much praise and would recommend it to anyone.
Rating: really liked it
The Nickel Boys, a book about the horrors of a reformatory school in 1960s Southern USA, was my first experience reading Colson Whitehead. I was excited to read this literary powerhouse, author of nine novels, one of which won the Pulitzer prize in 2017.
As I dug into the book, I recognised right away that it is written very well - some might say flawlessly. In fact I wouldn't dare to critique it on that level. Its structure, pacing, etc are exemplary.
Exemplary, yet, I was left wanting. I wanted to hear the author's voice. Instead, I felt I was reading something (dare I say) generic, conventional, predictable, safe. It didn't feel original - I had an eerie feeling that I'd read a slightly different version of this before. Of course I hadn't but I was still plagued by this haunting feeling that these pages could have been written by any number of other people.
I was oddly unaffected by the characters, as well as the plot twist which I registered with a relatively low level of emotion. I'm disappointed to feel this way. The subject matter is obviously important and I did appreciate the struggle the main character had in his attempts to live out the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., to love his oppressors while suffering and waiting for victory. I understand the theme of beaten down, damaged, broken idealism. I can eat that shit up with a spoon. I wanted Colson Whitehead to use that theme to torture me, transport me, touch me, and teach me.
It's hard to read a book with a worthy subject such as this one, but feel a lack of connection. Earlier this year, I read
A Woman is No Man and had a similar experience. In that case, it was mainly due to a lack of writing finesse. In
The Nickel Boys, the writing was all there, but for me, a sense of daring, a signature, a vital
something was missing. Something that would have told me I wasn't just reading another book about racial atrocities in the 1960s, but one that scalds as I close the last page, one that is branded with the author's unique powers.
Rating: really liked it
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize!
Colson Whitehead confirms his position as a phenomenal writer with this ostensibly heartbreaking and harrowing fictional storytelling, but which is informed by the darkest, most shameful, and ugliest period of American history explored through the lives of two young boys, set in the early 1960s Civil Rights time and all the horrors of the Jim Crow era in Frenchtown, segregated Tallahassee, Florida. Whitehead writes in understated and subtly nuanced prose, all the more effective in delivering its relentless and emotionally hard hitting punches that live on in the memory long after the reader has finished reading the book. Elwood Curtis is a bright and hardworking boy who lives with his beloved and strict grandmother who keeps him on the straight and narrow. He is caught by the fire and ideals of Martin Luther King's spiritual rhetoric and philosophy, and the fight for emancipation, believing in the equality of everyone.
Excited by the thought of attending a local black college, the innocent Elwood's life is to fall apart when he is sent to the evil hellhole that is The Nickel Academy, a segregated juvenile reform school run by the unbearably cruel and sadistic Maynard Spencer. Elwood is to find himself in a racist place that has no interest in educating or improving the lives of the young men and where everyday life reeks of despair, misery and never ending horrors. Vicious brutality, sexual abuse, torture, repression, corruption, disappearing boys and death are rife, as Elwood struggles to maintain King's higher ideals of love, trust and freedom in the face of his and his friend, Turner's, realities. Turner has a more cynical and jaundiced picture of the world he sees, believing Elwood to be naive, as he plots and schemes, trying to avoid as much trouble as possible. The boys futures are to be shaped by their experiences and what they have seen, and Elwood is living in New York when a traumatic past that refuses to lie down returns into his life.
The Nickel Academy is based on an actual reform school with its graveyard in Marianna, Florida, and interspersed in the narrative are quotes from the actual traumatised survivors of the place, along with quotes from King himself. Whitehead's novel is not only a scathing indictment of the likes of The Nickel Academy but of aspects of American society that allowed the existence of the reform school and the evil within, and as such bear responsibility for what happened there, but more pertinently, the political and social structures that legitimised such horrors, and the wider racism and discrimination. Whitehead shines a powerful light on American history, the shadows of which have never gone away, and which are undeniably present in our contemporary world. A superb novel that is a must read, of justice and injustice, and which I feel is destined to become a classic in the future. Highly recommended! Many thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC.
Rating: really liked it
[Book #3 for my grad school YA class: a historical fiction & crossover book]
This book has left me speechless. It will absolutely stick with me for a long time. Please read this and research the Dozier School for Boys!
Rating: really liked it
Quick update:
Meeting Colson Whitehead last night was great.
He was so hilarious!!! I don’t think one person in the room expected him to be as funny as he was. A gorgeous man - funnier than any of us could imagine.
He stayed away from the seriousness of the topics in his books.
A little quote from Colson about book genres.
Colson said there are only 2 types of books in the world: “those you like, and those you don’t”.
Super man...
Super author...
Super fun listening to him speak.
Audiobook…narrated by JD Jackson and Colson Whitehead.
I’m seeing Colson Whitehead this week in Santa Cruz, at a book reading. With much to admire about his body-of-work’ as an author and humanitarian, it will be exciting to meet him.
The “Nickel Boys”, is a ‘fictitious’ story -inspired by truth of what happened at the state-run institution, “The Dozier, Florida, School for Boys”- that took place at the height of the Civil Rights Movement.
‘The Nickel Academy’ was an establishment for boys in Tallahassee, Florida, in the 1960’s. It was a place where society didn’t much care what happened to the boys who attended. Some were orphans. Others considered juvenile delinquents - even for very minor wrongdoings.
The horrific atrocities that took place was sickening disturbing....dehumanizing brutal unfathomable abuse…..including torture, rape, and murder.
BEYOND AWFUL in other words!!
We follow the story of young Elwood Curtis….his friend, Turner, and other boys as they describe their trips to the ‘White House’. The stories are agonizing.
Elwood was a decent -better than decent - young man -with high marks in school with an idealistic outlook on human justice and racial equality — but one day -being in the wrong place at the wrong time got him sent to The Nickel Academy.
Elwood, the kid who believed in justice, civil rights before most did — listened to Martin Luther King regularly, got a huge ugly awakening at The Nickel School.
His dreams were shattered at the reform/abusive school. He struggled to understand all that was happening inside the walls of that institution. But it was the goodness and memories of his grandmother and MLK — that gave him hope to keep fighting for what was right.
I appreciate the importance of learning all that I did…..not only from this book alone —but from reading a little more about the true horror stories at Florida’s Dozier school in Marianna, Florida….which just recently -and finally - closed its doors in 2011.
Over the past decade hundreds of men have come forward to tell the gruesome stories of abuse and the terrible beatings they suffered.
‘Listening’ to this story felt flat and monotonous at times. I felt detached emotionally --
but intellectually I was appalled.
The writing was beautiful — but I also felt detached from it (through listening anyway) —
Then I debated the question: “was this detachment best for this story?” Was it intentional? -or was it me? Part of me thinks yes — part of me thinks no —to both questions. I hope to resolve this issue for myself after listening to Colson speak more about this book.
I have a hunch that I’ll connect with the physical book more than I did the Audiobook— and/or connect with things differently after listening to Colson Whitehead speak this coming Thursday night. I’m looking forward to meeting him -hearing him speak -very much!!
Thanks to my friend Margie for lending me her Audiobook — so I didn’t have to show up blind at the book reading this week.
Rating: really liked it
4.5 stars for a great book and sad times all around. Appreciate the way the main characters question Dr. King’s notion of still loving those who are cruel to you. Elwood’s precociousness and Turner’s heroism are so admirable and endearing. The plot twist is great too. Whitehead is a skilled writer but I do wish his prose opened up to more of Elwood’s emotional psyche rather than his journalistic tone, which limits the internal narrative and emotional experience. Since this is a story based on reality, we could have read a Wikipedia page or a journal instead; I wish Whitehead had seized the opportunity of differentiating his fictional story with an added layer of emotional depth. Regardless of that personal preference though, it's still a great book.
Rating: really liked it
The thought of this book stirs up a pain so sharp it almost seems my flesh lay open.
There is so much I can’t figure out how to say in words right now. My heart feels as raw as a burn; a feeling made all the more resonant by the realization that the story is inspired by true events, that it captures between its pages the remembered violence of America's history—fathomless and ugly.
Colson Whitehead refuses to do their reader the dishonor of the lies, the comfortable omissions, and I'm glad for it.
A must-read.
Rating: really liked it
What's happening? Why was I bored by a book so many loved, especially since its subject should have affected me a great deal? The introduction was promising. The novel itself left me disconnected and detached, not to mention I had this nagging feeling that I'd read this story before.
The writing was straight forward if I'm being honest, I expected it to be a bit more literary.
The story is important, kudos to Whitehead for bringing it to our attention. My brain was, of course, horrified, but my heart was only half melted.
Another book I feel I should have loved but didn't.
Rating: really liked it
"We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthwhile, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness."
(Martin Luther King Jr, Britannica.com)
[Martin Luther King at Zion Hill - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6sqA...]
***
"Even in death the boys were trouble."
"The boys could have been many things had they not been ruined by that place."
(Florida reform school, Wikipedia.org)
The Nickel Boys is based on the real incidents that happened in a Florida based “reform” school that operated for over 100 years. This heartbreaking and powerful book represents and depicts the will of humanity to endure, the endless fight for self-respect and honour, and the quest for deliverance. It also highlights the belief and arrogance of certain human beings that they are superior to the rest of humans.
“Her father died in jail after a white lady downtown accused him of not getting out of her way on the sidewalk.”Can you believe that a child lost her father after being arrested for “bumptious contact”, because of not giving way on a downtown sidewalk?
This disturbing story also leaves the reader with a feeling of optimism and hope, and the thought that within each of us there is a part that would want the world to be a better, happy and peaceful place. But surely it is going to be a painful journey, as many of the humans still have the above-mentioned arrogant belief.
(Men of Destiny,
Jack B Yeats)
It is true that The Nickel Boys is a fictional story, but it is to be noted that in today`s world, much of this story is ridiculously true!
The Nickel Boys is
painful, distressing, sad, heartbreaking and powerful – and, a must-read.***
"Hobbled and handicapped before the race even began, never figuring out how to be normal."
*
"He who gets behind in a race must forever remain behind or run faster than the man in front."
*
"The law was one thing - you can march and wave signs around and change a law if you convinced enough white people."
*
"You can change the law but you can't change people and how they treat each other."
*
"but that was the message of the movement: to trust in the ultimate decency that lived in every human heart."
"The world continued to instruct: Do not love for they will disappear, do not trust for you will be betrayed, do not stand up for you will be swatted down. Still he heard those higher imperatives: Love and that love will be returned, trust in the righteous path and it will lead you to deliverance, fight and things will change."
Rating: really liked it
True to form, Colson Whitehead delivers another
well-written, deep story that while incredibly devastating, deserves to be told.
The Nickel Boys is fictional account based on the
true, horrifying Dozier School for Boys in good ol’ Florida, which Whitehead references at both the beginning and end of the book.
”You can hide a lot in an acre, in the dirt.”
I was immediately a fan of Elwood, the main character, a virtuous teenage student, following rules, respecting authority, and admiring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. En route to early college classes one day, Elwood finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up sentenced to Nickel Academy, a reform school for young men. There, he eventually becomes friends with another boy, Turner, who calls him out for being so naive. The boys attempt to keep their heads down, and do the work required of them in order to hopefully avoid harm and leave sooner rather than later. Parts of the story flash forward to several years post-Nickel, and the ultimate outcome was not what I had expected. A book that is tough to read given the grim subject, but one that needs to be shared.
Infuriating and tragic,
The Nickel Boys is a small but powerful book that packs a punch.
Rating: really liked it
I was about as disappointed by this book as I was with the author's Pulitzer winning The Underground Railroad. I know it is a document based on true stories of an awful reform school in Florida (Dozier), but the writing just wasn't that great. There is a shift in perspective near the end that seems to invalidate half of what preceded and besides that, it was fairly predictable. I found the descriptions lackluster, the characters two-dimensional and the plot singularly lacking in structure. I am not saying that the story of racism in Florida (of which I could speak volumes) and the inherent violence and injustice of southern reform schools isn't an important, even critical, tale to tell particularly in these times with the return of racism as a preference rather than an anathema, but I feel that this narrative fell short in terms of literary quality. The terrors described by Alice Walker in The Color Purple or in Beloved by the late Toni Morrison are more vivid and terrifying than in this colder treatment by Whitehead.
Not sure, other than the spectacular subject matter, why this one is being considered for a Pulitzer - it is certainly less qualified than Disappearing Earth for example.
Colson went on to win this year’s Pulitzer. Truly, not sure that his name belongs in the rarified company of Faulkner and Updike in 2-time Pulitzer winners. I’d have to guess that this was a political choice rather than a literary one, which is unfortunate because it is, of course, a prize for good writing. Anyway, it is good to have an African American in that list, but in my mind, Toni Morrison or Alice Walker (or Ralph Ellison for that matter) would be more deserving.
My List of 2020 Pulitzer Candidates:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...My blog about the 2020 Pulitzer: https://wp.me/phAoN-19m
Rating: really liked it
Before starting this novel, I had read several interviews with Colson Whitehead, and reading them added to my understanding of THE NICKEL BOYS. Mr Whitehead chose to write about a piece of history which even he had known nothing about before 2014: a reform school for boys which operated for decades and where children were treated with cruelty and brutality.
A deeply disturbing and shocking novel about two black boys in the 1960s who are sent to the so-called reform school, The Nickel Academy, who become friends and who undergo massive, horrific psychological and physical abuse during their stay there.
THE NICKEL BOYS is not a long novel, but it does comprise a lot of anger, helplessness, pain and despair. I am certain I will reread this novel again, for its intensity and narration. This is not a novel that leaves a reader indifferent …
Rating: really liked it
A world of injustice or the truer, biding world? The Nickel Boys melds When They See Us with The Shawshank Redemption and Colson Whitehead’s faultless instincts as a novelist. Some books are 5 stars because they strike a chord with your own specific reading tastes; some are 5 stars because they are so good everybody should read them. This book is firmly in the latter category.
The Nickel Boys is about a reformatory school for boys (effectively a prison) during the Jim Crow years, based on a real-life institution and the horrendous abuses that took place there. Whitehead treats this material with care – it is a finely calibrated balancing act that conveys the truth of what occurred in such places, without resorting to shock value or stepping over the line into gratuitous detail. This is a novel that achieves its emotional resonance not through
explicit brutality, but by making the reader fall in love with its characters.
We follow Elwood Curtis, a sweet kid, diligent, bright, aspiring to a college education. His misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (‘wrong’ for an African-American boy in 1960s Florida, wrongness being relative) lands him at The Nickel Academy. There Elwood befriends the streetwise and cynical Turner, whose personality contrasts starkly with his own. Nevertheless, they form a life-long bond, their destinies forever intertwined.
At Nickel, Elwood struggles to reconcile a self-preservation instinct with his idealistic streak: he knows the best way to survive is to keep his head down but at the same time his conscience compels him to emulate his heroes in the Civil Rights movement, to make a stand. With nuance and delicacy, the novel explores this impossible paradox of trying to resist an oppressive power structure while living within it – any form of activism is at the risk of one’s own life.
Whitehead’s prose style here is deceptively plain. Economical and direct, this is the kind of writing that belies its own sophistication and makes this a very accessible read (still not an 'easy' one, due to the subject matter). The cadence and tone evoke an earnestness and sense of innocence (or perhaps, naïveté) that captures the spirit of the story perfectly. It’s also quite a short book that, for its size, makes a mighty impression.
The Nickel Boys is a novel with an enormous heart that’s sure to break yours. 5 stars.
