Reviews
" Haunting and haunted ... devastating. ..The book feels like a mission, and it's an essential one...he pulls off a brilliant sleight of hand that elevates the mere act of resurrecting Elwood's buried story into at once a miracle and a tragedy."--Frank Rich, The New York Times Book Review (cover) " Stellar ... heartbreaking ...a beautiful, unforgettable young hero who walks right off the page and into your heart...If you have been thinking you should read Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys is the perfect place to start."- Newsday "A book that will further cement his place in the pantheon of influential American writers." -- Time Magazine " The Nickel Boys is a chilling, masterful novel that explores the depths of evil and the resilience of the human spirit. Whitehead's prose is dazzling, and the narrative's nimble twist is a swift kick to the solar plexus."-- The Minneapolis Star-Tribune " Propulsive and gorgeous and completely devastating."--LitHub.com "THE NICKEL BOYS is in conversation with works by James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison and especially Martin Luther King.... It shreds our easy confidence in the triumph of goodness and leaves in its place a hard and bitter truth about the ongoing American experiment." -- Ron Charles , The Washington Post "A tense, nervy performance, even more rigorously controlled than its predecessor. The narration is disciplined and the sentences plain and sturdy, oars cutting into the water. Every chapter hits its marks."-- Parul Seghal, The New York Times " The Nickel Boys often feels like Whitehead's conversation with both the idealistic forerunners of the civil rights generation and...the woke youth of today."--Laura Miller, Slate.com "Not a moment is wasted, and for someone who writes as vividly as Whitehead, there's also a graceful economy here. He uses words carefully, as if he doesn't want them to get in the way of the truth he's excavating."- Boston Globe, "The acclaimed author of The Underground Railroad follows up with a leaner, meaner saga of Deep South captivity set in the mid-20th century and fraught with horrors more chilling for being based on true-life atrocities.There's something a tad more melodramatic in this book's conception (and resolution) than one expects from Whitehead, giving it a drugstore-paperback glossiness that enhances its blunt-edged impact." - Kirkus Review "Whitehead follows his dynamic, highly awarded, best-selling Civil War saga, The Underground Railroad , with a tautly focused and gripping portrait of two African American teens during the last vicious years of Jim Crow. . . Whitehead's magnetic characters exemplify stoicism and courage, and each supremely crafted scene smolders and flares with injustice and resistance, building to a staggering revelation." - Booklist Online "Whitehead's brilliant examination of America's history of violence is a stunning novel of impeccable language and startling insight." - Publishers Weekly, "The acclaimed author of The Underground Railroad follows up with a leaner, meaner saga of Deep South captivity set in the mid-20th century and fraught with horrors more chilling for being based on true-life atrocities.There's something a tad more melodramatic in this book's conception (and resolution) than one expects from Whitehead, giving it a drugstore-paperback glossiness that enhances its blunt-edged impact." - Kirkus Review "Whitehead follows his dynamic, highly awarded, best-selling Civil War saga, The Underground Railroad , with a tautly focused and gripping portrait of two African American teens during the last vicious years of Jim Crow. . . Whitehead's magnetic characters exemplify stoicism and courage, and each supremely crafted scene smolders and flares with injustice and resistance, building to a staggering revelation." - Booklist Online "Whitehead's brilliant examination of America's history of violence is a stunning novel of impeccable language and startling insight." - Publishers Weekly "A gripping and brilliant novel based on a true story about a boys' reformatory school in Florida in the 1960s. Whitehead is one of the most daring and gifted authors writing these days, and I will never miss one of his books." - Elizabeth Gilbert, author of City of Girls, " Haunting and haunted ... devastating. ..The book feels like a mission, and it's an essential one...he pulls off a brilliant sleight of hand that elevates the mere act of resurrecting Elwood's buried story into at once a miracle and a tragedy."--Frank Rich, The New York Times Book Review (cover) " Stellar ... heartbreaking ...a beautiful, unforgettable young hero who walks right off the page and into your heart...If you have been thinking you should read Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys is the perfect place to start."- Newsday " America's Storyteller. A book that will further cement his place in the pantheon of influential American writers." -- Time Magazine " The Nickel Boys is a chilling, masterful novel that explores the depths of evil and the resilience of the human spirit. Whitehead's prose is dazzling, and the narrative's nimble twist is a swift kick to the solar plexus."-- The Minneapolis Star-Tribune " Propulsive and gorgeous and completely devastating."--LitHub.com "THE NICKEL BOYS is in conversation with works by James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison and especially Martin Luther King.... It shreds our easy confidence in the triumph of goodness and leaves in its place a hard and bitter truth about the ongoing American experiment." -- Ron Charles , The Washington Post "A tense, nervy performance, even more rigorously controlled than its predecessor. The narration is disciplined and the sentences plain and sturdy, oars cutting into the water. Every chapter hits its marks."-- Parul Seghal, The New York Times
