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A review by willowbiblio
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
2.0
"You could never know what was going on with other people, but their private selves were never far away."
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I anticipated that I would like this a lot more than I did, because it was on the NYT Best Books of 2021 list. In no way did this book contain heists and adventures as advertised. This was more a series of avoidable scenarios that somehow only had a resolution through illegal means.
Carney was very much an unreliable narrator so that was hard for me as I tend not to enjoy those. I found Pepper's POV to be the best part of the book, but that was only a cumulative 10-15 pages, kind of a bummer.
This took me way longer than it should have because it was frankly boring and really slow. The weird asides to give bit players backstories made no sense to me. Similarly, the constant Carney flashbacks dropped the ongoing main plot too often. It felt disjointed and like the book was just lumbering to take off without ever actually succeeding. I also found it odd that Whitehead repeated the entire setting/interaction at Lacey's with Pepper during the 2nd part, because the reader had just gone through it real time less than 50 pages prior.
I could never feel completely sympathetic to Carney because he was always so discontent once he'd achieved the next thing and sort of one of the most spiteful characters of the book.
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I anticipated that I would like this a lot more than I did, because it was on the NYT Best Books of 2021 list. In no way did this book contain heists and adventures as advertised. This was more a series of avoidable scenarios that somehow only had a resolution through illegal means.
Carney was very much an unreliable narrator so that was hard for me as I tend not to enjoy those. I found Pepper's POV to be the best part of the book, but that was only a cumulative 10-15 pages, kind of a bummer.
This took me way longer than it should have because it was frankly boring and really slow. The weird asides to give bit players backstories made no sense to me. Similarly, the constant Carney flashbacks dropped the ongoing main plot too often. It felt disjointed and like the book was just lumbering to take off without ever actually succeeding. I also found it odd that Whitehead repeated the entire setting/interaction at Lacey's with Pepper during the 2nd part, because the reader had just gone through it real time less than 50 pages prior.
I could never feel completely sympathetic to Carney because he was always so discontent once he'd achieved the next thing and sort of one of the most spiteful characters of the book.