Book Review: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Publisher: Doubleday
Publication Date: July 16, 2019
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood’s ideals and Turner’s skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.
Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers and “should further cement Whitehead as one of his generation’s best” (Entertainment Weekly).
Elwood Curtis is an intelligent, college-bound Black boy in 1960s Florida. He never gets into trouble. An idealistic young man, he loves to listen to his record of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches. Then one day, he finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and is sentenced to Nickel Academy, a juvenile reform school. He very quickly discovers the horrific abuse that the students are subjected to. Luckily, a boy named Turner takes Elwood under his wing and shows him how to stay mostly under the radar. Turner tries his best to convince Elwood to leave his idealism behind and accept that the rest of the world is as corrupt as Nickel.
This book was a hard read. The treatment of the boys at Nickel is unconscionable. The way Colson Whitehead writes about the abuse is spare but the little detail he does use was enough to make me feel like I had been punched in the gut at certain points. For instance, Elwood hears a big industrial fan his first night at Nickel. Later he finds out the fan is covering up the sound of something else. From then on, every time the fan is mentioned, you know what’s really going on without it having to be spelled out.
Even though The Nickel Boys takes place in the 1960s, it’s relevant today. Not much has changed – Black boys are still getting in trouble for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or just being *in* a place, like driving while black or shopping while black. Mass incarnation is a huge problem. And the Dozier School for Boys, the real-life school this book is based on, didn’t close until 2011! Almost 100 graves of students have been found on the grounds there.
Whitehead’s last book, The Underground Railroad, (read my review here) won all kinds of awards, including the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It can be hard to follow up a book that did that well, but The Nickel Boys is just as brilliant as The Underground Railroad. As a matter of fact, it won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Highly recommended.
