Reviews with content warning for Physical abuse - The Nickel Boys

Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

154 reviews

agavemonster's review against another edition

dark reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

"When he was little, he kept lookout on the dining room of the Richmond Hotel. It had been closed to his race and one day it would open. He waited and waited. In the dark cell, he reconsidered his vigil. The recognition he sought went beyond brown skin—he was looking for someone who looked like him, for someone to claim as kin. For others to claim him as kin, those who saw the same future approaching, slow as it may be and overfond of back roads and secret hardscrabble paths, attuned to the deeper music in the speeches and hand-painted signs of protest. Those ready to commit their weight to the great lever and move the world. They never appeared. In the dining room or anywhere else."

A sober, cynical, heartbreaking work written in the long dark shadow cast by true history. As in the great American novels, each character serves to symbolize a social role or system, but is starkly and truthfully etched in the details of their own specific existence as well. Elwood and Turner could be perceived as ciphers of the two survival strategies of Black Americans pre-civil rights—standing up straight in a shirt and tie to demand your dignity like Elwood's hero MLK, and doing what needs to be done to run the "obstacle course" in which Turner has lived his whole life—but they're also two young boys who are caught in the crosshairs of this Jim Crow-era torture house, and you can't forget it. The daily degradations are inescapable, and the horrors you don't see are sketched in light pencil contour, just enough to wrench your gut as you fill in the rest of the picture. This happens again and again. The intimately depicted evil of the white superintendents and staff runs the gamut from complicity to sadism. "The sons held the old ways close." Griff and Chet's boxing match really killed me. Finally, I should have seen the well-foreshadowed turn near the end, but it still blew me apart: brilliance and tragedy. One of my best books of the year.

Content Warnings