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A review by askmrtalbot
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
4.0
There was a long break in reading this because it's increasingly difficult to finish a book on my iPad when there are so many other things that can take up time on it. However, I started to actively shun my social media accounts (to varying degrees of success) towards the end of last year and it allowed me more time to devote to doing actual reading.
This is an excellent book that deals with really harsh subject matter detailed through four distinct episodes utilizing the Underground Railroad as a real and tangible train as opposed to a figurative one described in history. The symbolism isn't hard to see, and at various times is made very explicit, as so much of America was built on the backs of black slave labor that its literal foundation of a series of underground stations and locomotive lines goes unseen. The main character has to be tough and stoic because she's seen and experienced so much despair that it often makes the book tough to read even though the writing itself is excellent.
My favorite aspect is how the story takes a traditional bounty hunter archetype that would normally be at the heart of a series of old west novels in Ridgeway and makes him so utterly despicable. He's very much the kind of character that could carry a novel on his own but the fact that he is chasing runaway slaves in order to return them to their owners as a means of holding up what he envisions as the American ideal does a tremendous job of turning that trope on its head.
This is a book that I can't stop thinking about, and that's usually the sign of one that's excellent in a lot of ways.
This is an excellent book that deals with really harsh subject matter detailed through four distinct episodes utilizing the Underground Railroad as a real and tangible train as opposed to a figurative one described in history. The symbolism isn't hard to see, and at various times is made very explicit, as so much of America was built on the backs of black slave labor that its literal foundation of a series of underground stations and locomotive lines goes unseen. The main character has to be tough and stoic because she's seen and experienced so much despair that it often makes the book tough to read even though the writing itself is excellent.
My favorite aspect is how the story takes a traditional bounty hunter archetype that would normally be at the heart of a series of old west novels in Ridgeway and makes him so utterly despicable. He's very much the kind of character that could carry a novel on his own but the fact that he is chasing runaway slaves in order to return them to their owners as a means of holding up what he envisions as the American ideal does a tremendous job of turning that trope on its head.
This is a book that I can't stop thinking about, and that's usually the sign of one that's excellent in a lot of ways.