Cruel School

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

New York : Doubleday, [2019]  

213 p. ; 22 cm.

 

After reading Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, I knew I wanted to read his latest novel - The Nickel Boys.  Underground Railroad was brutal at times, but the fantastic nature of the novel helped me as a reader keep it's terror at bay - there is no such consolation in Nickel Boys, especially when you realize that the novel is firmly grounded in the real-life horrors that occurred in the Dozier School for Boys in the Florida panhandle. 

Whitehead's novel is set in the mid-60s and involves a stand-up African American high school student - Elwood- who is headed for college near Tallahassee.  But being a young black man in Jim Crow Florida lands Elwood in a reform school for boys that is run with sadistic cruelty, racism and corruption.  There, the idealistic Elwood faces the barbarism of the school and becomes friends with the more savvy Turner who is willing to help them both survive (boys in the school are sometimes killed by the staff both in real-life and in the novel). The novel is a taught and terrifying story of survival in the cruelest of environments. The reader never knows what will happen to the characters right up until the shocking ending. 

As I mentioned in my post about The Underground Railroad, Whitehead is a superb writer and - if you can endure the cruelty of the events - the novel is well worth reading.