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jenny_king 's review for:
The Nickel Boys
by Colson Whitehead
The main reason why I am giving this book 4⭐️ is because I want to provide a distinction between this book and Underground Railroad, which I adored. Technically and structurally I did really enjoy The Nickel Boys, but it just didn’t have the va-va-voom that I got from the other book. In that story I was immediately sucked into the life of Cora the slave, and her adventures of escaping and fleeing the slave hunter. There was a real emotional depth that made my heart leap on every other page to see what was happening.
What I found really interesting was the sense that if you put the books together, they shared so many similarities despite there being about 100 years between them. Looking at the attitudes of whites to blacks, and seeing the sheer discrimination makes it so very evident that in this respect there was very little progress during this time.
Although you can definitely tell that the books are written by the same author, this one almost has a more rigid style that makes it less easy to read. You still feel that connection with Elwood but it was not quite as seamless. His story is completely heartbreaking, and I actually found it more emotionally difficult to read than Railroad. Maybe due to the time period which was only a stones throw away, maybe it was his age, maybe it was the life he had waiting for him in college if it hadn’t been for one decision, and maybe it was his incredible moral fibre and the code which governed his life and his actions.
I looked at a couple of other reviews while trying to gather my thoughts, and one person used the word “detached” when talking about it, and this definitely resonates. As I mentioned I personally felt that Railroad was an emotional book, whereas the writing in this one did feel more detached. I’m not sure whether this was intentional, to provide the reader some space away from the atrocities in the school, and to be able to continue reading with some semblance of compartmentalisation. To read those scenes without the emotion? And to be honest I’m not sure which style I would have preferred for this particular story.
What I found really interesting was the sense that if you put the books together, they shared so many similarities despite there being about 100 years between them. Looking at the attitudes of whites to blacks, and seeing the sheer discrimination makes it so very evident that in this respect there was very little progress during this time.
Although you can definitely tell that the books are written by the same author, this one almost has a more rigid style that makes it less easy to read. You still feel that connection with Elwood but it was not quite as seamless. His story is completely heartbreaking, and I actually found it more emotionally difficult to read than Railroad. Maybe due to the time period which was only a stones throw away, maybe it was his age, maybe it was the life he had waiting for him in college if it hadn’t been for one decision, and maybe it was his incredible moral fibre and the code which governed his life and his actions.
I looked at a couple of other reviews while trying to gather my thoughts, and one person used the word “detached” when talking about it, and this definitely resonates. As I mentioned I personally felt that Railroad was an emotional book, whereas the writing in this one did feel more detached. I’m not sure whether this was intentional, to provide the reader some space away from the atrocities in the school, and to be able to continue reading with some semblance of compartmentalisation. To read those scenes without the emotion? And to be honest I’m not sure which style I would have preferred for this particular story.