Reviews

Balladi John Henrystä by Colson Whitehead

lowkeycatlady's review against another edition

5.0

need to come back to write a review. not really a page turner but astonishing in breadth and scale, thematically, temporally, etc etc etc. i'm slowly warming up to whitehead's style and i'm falling in love bruh i see it now <3 i get it<3

blue_has_no_value's review against another edition

2.0

This is nearly a hundred pages longer than any other Whitehead novel, and I could feel every extra word. It's maybe the most glaring recent example of Second Novel Syndrome--simultaneously about everything and nothing, overwritten and underfocused.

There's clear proof here that Whitehead would eventually be great--and now he's won two of the past four Pulitzers--but this one's a struggle.

miscellamy's review against another edition

dark funny slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

krissymartini's review against another edition

4.0

This was West Virginia. I sometimes got confused with the interlocking stories but overall liked this one a lot. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator did a great Ballad of John Henry.

melias6's review against another edition

4.0

In his 2001 review of John Henry Days, Jonathan Franzen* described it as “funny and wise and ... only rarely a page turner,” which is precisely how I feel completing it almost a month later. Unlike the propulsive, straightforward narrative of The Underground Railroad, Whitehead structures John Henry Days as a series of vignettes told from multiple perspectives, the first section following journalist J. and his colleagues attending the titular festival to celebrate the distribution of a John Henry stamp, and branching out from there in subsequent sections. These include reflections not only from periphery characters like mail clerks and innkeepers, but fictional accounts of those who composed John Henry folk songs over the years and, interspersed throughout, John Henry’s own narration leading up to the events of the legend. Each individual piece reads as a comprehensive, satisfying, deep dive short story that amounts to masterful world-building, but a world I was rarely excited about returning to whenever I put it down. Still, it’s literary and challenging in the best possible way, and worth a read for fans of the Pulitzer-winning Railroad.

*Franzen’s own The Corrections, along with John Henry Days, were shortlisted for the Pulitzer the year it went to Richard Russo’s Empire Falls. That’s quite a line-up.

meiklejohn's review against another edition

3.0

I find it frustrating to read a book that a) is written by someone with immense, astonishing, overwhelming talent and b) needed an editor to go at it with a chainsaw.

meredith_summers's review against another edition

sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

joelwitter's review against another edition

4.0

Delightful in so many ways. There is a small something I could never describe that makes this novel miss the five star mark, it is still a joy to read from beginning to end.

missnicelady's review against another edition

1.0

So. Much. Writing!

Fucking hell. I forced myself through about 75 pages hoping the book would start to pay off on its ideas, but instead it smothered them under piles of unlikeable characters, flat dialogue, five-page descriptions of free buffets, and four-page descriptions of someone choking on buffet food.

I started to dread my commute because I didn't want to have to read any more of this book.

justlcruz's review against another edition

2.0

I think you could cut out half of the book and it would still be a good movie.