A review by ttodd86
John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead

2.0

I feel like I might have enjoyed this book more had I read it at the time of its release in 2001. Nearly 20 years after the fact, I didn't find the book to meet the expectations I had based on its early reviews, nor rise up to the level of Whitehead's later work. The writing is without question solid, but the side trips to various events and times often come across as the result of writing exercises -- write a chapter that uses only one (lengthy) paragraph, write a chapter in the form of a script -- that I thought took away from a more interesting story. It feels like there might be other, better, ways to make some of the same social comments. More troubling, and as others have noted in their reviews, the book moves slowly with very little happening. Well before I was done I found myself eyeing the rest of my nightstand book pile and looking forward to a more enjoyable read.