A review by drewsof
John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead

5.0

Damn, to've read this in 2001 when it was fresh, when Colson Whitehead was just the weird dude who wrote about the elevator inspectors. We've all experienced the greatness of his work since then, all the way to the culmination of everything that came before in [b:The Underground Railroad|30555488|The Underground Railroad|Colson Whitehead|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1493178362s/30555488.jpg|48287641], and so it's a little obvious to say that this book is, like pretty much all of his work, astounding. But this book is dense, it is confounding, it leads you down paths that it doesn't explain. And the ending, of course, leaves you asking the same question that people have been asking about John Henry the whole time: how much of it was true? Did he die then, did he die later? In 2001, I might've thought the book overly ambitious and a little flawed in its execution; but in 2018, knowing what happens next (for Whitehead, for the country), it's hard not to say "god, he was this good that early?"