A review by thefoxyreader
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Short and bittersweet, Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys is an unsettling look at the failings of the reform school system in the American South in the 1960s and its impact on young Black men.

You know historical fiction is good when the story feels authentic. With this book, you can tell that Whitehead did his research in order to present an accurate portrayal of what life would have been like for boys in these institutions. Everything feels very real.

This book focuses on two young men who are sentenced to the Nickel School after unfortunate events. Elwood is a smart, promising young man, who is arrested after unknowingly hitching a ride with a carjacker while he is on his way to take classes at the local college. Despite the terrors that he experiences at the school, he remains optimistic and idealistic that eventually he will find a way out and justice will be served.

Taylor is Elwood’s opposite. He’s been in Nickel for longer, serving out a sentence after he gets tired of feeling like he’s “performing” for the white people at the bowling alley he works at. He is jaded and operates without much hope but helps out Elwood when he can.

From the outside Nickel may appear as a wonderful reform school that takes care of its students and puts on community events; however, it is a nightmare hellscape for the boys, who are whipped, malnourished, sexually abused, and sometimes killed by the heartless, evil men who run the place.

Overall, I was really impressed with Whitehead’s writing. This book is pretty short at only 210 pages, but he manages to paint a picture of the school really well while also establishing the connections between the Nickel Boys. I really did feel their pain and the hopelessness of their situation. Whitehead also brilliantly ties in many details of the Civil Rights movement, and I was really moved by the way Elwood derived hope from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words.

My one critique of this book, however, is that the chapters in the present day just aren’t as interesting as the chapters at Nickel. I get what he was trying to do with the present day chapters and
the narrative twist at the end is mostly effective
, but it just didn’t connect with me as well as the chapters at Nickel. I feel like a present day chapter at the beginning and one at the end would have made a great narrative bookend and have been more effective.

That one critique aside, this book is extremely well-researched and will lead to many great discussions about the inequality in our education and justice system that still remains today.

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