title: The Nickel Boys by: Whitehead, Colson published: 2019-07-16 read: preview

Colson Whitehead wrote two Pulitzer Prize novels: Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, and this one.

This is a story about a black boy who’s unlucky in the US of the 1950s–1970s.   A book with a surprising, beautiful and sad, ending.  In which all’s right and all’s wrong at the same time. Based on the true (and gruesome) story of the Nickel school, where boys were abused and killed.

Main character is Elwood Curtis, a young black boy living in Eleanor, Florida, during the time of the Civil Rights Movement. It inspires him but, after being arrested for riding in a stolen car, he is sentenced to a reform school called Nickel Academy: brutal treatment and abuse.

In the prologue, we meet a man named Elwood Curtis who is living in New York City. As a teenager, he attended the Nickel Academy, a reform school in Florida that is now being demolished. He reads in the newspaper that a secret graveyard has been discovered on the grounds and realises that he needs to return to the school and tell his story.

Whitehead plays with the narrative going back and forth, switching between Elwood’s experiences at Nickel and the present-day narrative, cleaning up what went on back than at the “academy”. The eventual reveal of Turner’s fate is shocking, and haven’t we heard many of such stories in Europe and the Americas.

The Nickel Boys is not just a historical novel; it deals with America’s racist past and reminds us that no, the work is not finished yet.