Reviews - O Reformatório Nickel

11.7k reviews for:

O Reformatório Nickel

Colson Whitehead

4.32 AVERAGE

readingwithrushi's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

justbialosky's review against another edition

4.5

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

kerrimcbooknerd's review against another edition

4.0

Plenty of boys had talked of the secret graveyard before, but as it had ever been with Nickel, no one believed them until someone else said it.

I literally just set this book down and I have so. many. EMOTIONS.

This is the tale of Elwood Curtis, a young black boy living in Jim Crowe era Florida, whose decision to hitch a ride lands him a reformatory school called the Nickel Academy. Elwood believes the world is changing and believes in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. Unfortunately, the Nickel Academy is a den of nightmares that will put that belief to the test.

So. Let's talk about these emotions. Jesus, this book packs a punch. I alternated from being incredibly sad to blindingly outraged and everything in between in just over 200 pages of literature. To think that something like what is described in this book actually happened made it 1000x more intense. I felt Elwood's sense of helplessness and defeat. I can never feel it as acutely as someone who has actually lived through that situation, but it is a testament to this author that I felt it as deeply as I did. My heart sank the longer he stayed in Nickel Academy and with every new injustice he and his fellow "students" were forced to suffer at the whim of some Good Ol' Boy.

I went into this book knowing it wasn't going to be an easy read, but still... oof... This hurt.

Yet, this book was an incredible read and something that should be experienced. I'm going to be thinking about this book for awhile and I think that's a very good thing.

cashifsheikh's review against another edition

4.75

dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

jaspersandwich's review against another edition

3.0

My second Whitehead book, and both are great books, but each time something stalls in me regarding his storytelling form. His themes are hugely important testaments to African American history, his prose is fluid and evocative, his voices authentic, his storylines engaging. With The Underground Railroad, his blending of reality and fiction, fantasy and historical brutality, sat uncomfortably with me. I couldn't reconcile the form and its subject.
In the Nickel Boys, that conceit/concern is not there, but there is a freedom with narrative voices that jarred me. The narrator shifts several times as the novel progresses, and while he employs a third person narrator throughout, it is always heavily invested in one character, for the most part being Elwood. Later, the story of a previous runaway is introduced as almost folklore, yet we have again a narrator who knows deeply the thoughts, feelings, and events connected to Clayton's flight from Nickel available to none. Back to Elwood, and finally on to 'new' Elwood who has no knowledge of the young Elwood's life, yet we have been privy to it all. It is this blending of omniscient and limited omniscient (almost first person) that feels odd to me, but perhaps I am not flexible enough a reader.
Also, I felt this novel too abrupt to easily command full engagement with the characters. The pace is unnecessarily brisk to fit its plot to its covers, and its subject. I wanted to feel furious or heart-broken at the end, and instead felt like I had been led to a clever plot denouement/twist just in time for the framed finish.
The plot precluded a first person narrative, but I feel it would have given a far more powerful punch that way (or even a loyal limited omniscient pov). And this subject matter certainly demands a powerful vehicle.