The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Little, Brown Book Group

9780708899427

224pp

This book, the next offering from author of The Underground Railroad, is just as heartbreaking as his first. Following two boys in a Florida reform school, we see the brutality of it alongside the US Civil Rights movement. It is an unrelenting book, with page after page of visceral violence and despair, so it’s not for the faint-hearted.

That being said, it’s one of my standout books of the year already. Elwood and Turner, two opposing personalities, make up the centre of this narrative. Elwood has taken Dr Martin Luther King’s words to heart, and fundamentally believes in the Civil Rights movement. However, Turner has been ground down by the Nickel Academy already, and sees no way out.

Where the threat of being taken “out back” (and disappearing) is a very real one, the Nickel Academy is a horrifying ordeal for the genteel Elwood, who is not used to the depredations of class and racial discrimination. This is a reform school 1960s Florida, however, where physical, emotional, and sexual abuse is rife. Segregated, the black boys at the school are victim to the harshest of treatment.

A harrowing and enraging narrative, this highlights the abuses suffered by African Americans, both today and during the Civil Rights movement on the 20th Century. Whitehead’s novels serve to throw a spotlight on the injustices visited on black Americans time and time again, and act as a reminder that the past is not so very far away. I’m a big fan of his writing, both in its beauty and its terror. Whitehead is one of the greats of American literature, and his books are a terrifying glimpse into black experience.

I highly, highly recommend this book to read, but make sure you do so with fortitude and courage. It takes courage to write these books, and it should only be read over and over again.