Colson Whitehead

Tallahassee, Florida, 1960s: Brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood Curtis is about to enroll at the local black college. But one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives instead at the Nickel Academy, which claims to provide training for its inmates to become "honorable and honest men". In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where abuse is rife. Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood attempts to live by Dr. Martin Luther King's assertion, "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." But his new friend Turner believes the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty of their oppressors. The tension between Elwood's idealism and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision that will have decades-long repercussions...

The Nickel Boys

Kimmy Hobden

Author of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead, brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in 1960s Florida. Praise for Pulitzer Prize-winning The Underground Railroad: 'My book of the year by some distance . . . luminous, furious, wildly inventive' Observer 'An engrossing and harrowing novel' Sunday Times 'Tells one of the most compelling stories I have ever read' Guardian Whitehead is a superb storyteller . . . [he] brilliantly intertwines his allegory with history . . . writing at the peak of his game' Telegraph ________________________________________________________________________ Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clearsighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide 'physical, intellectual and moral training' which will equip its inmates to become 'honorable and honest men'. In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear 'out back'. Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King's ringing assertion, 'Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.' But Elwood's fellow inmate and new friend Turner thinks Elwood is naive and worse; the world is crooked, and the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors. The tension between Elwood's idealism and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision which will have decades-long repercussions. Based on the history of a real reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped and destroyed the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative by a great American novelist whose work is essential to understanding the current reality of the United States.

poprika

In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men." In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy. Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven 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.

A Novel

peyton mckenzie

So often, black history is erased from the books and forgotten. I never knew about the Florida School for Boys, so Whitehead's novel was eye-opening. To know that this novel was based on fact and not purely fiction irks my nerves and gives me insane goosebumps. Never before have I had such a visceral reaction to a novel. This makes me want to delve into even more historical fiction. 

Without a doubt, the novel is beautifully written, captivating me to the point that I could not bear to put it down. This book was the first to bring me out of the reading slump I've been in since graduating, and I'm eager to pick up another one of Whitehead's masterpieces. I'd recommend this book to anyone and everyone.

Cindy Lieberman

A heartbreaking novel about Elwood Curtis, a boy who “is good as anyone” and smarter than most, but whose lack of guile gets him sent to a boys’ reformatory that routinely abuses its black charges. Based on a real place and several real-life accounts.

Stefanie  Uwah

This book was inspired by the true story of The Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. When I got to the end, I realized I would have much rather spent my time reading the true accounts of former students rather than this semi-fictional retelling. 

Something about this book was disjointed. I thought many of the transitions from past to present were choppy and I was left feeling disoriented. The final twist was definitely a surprise but ultimately, I didn’t find the writing to be unique and was extremely underwhelmed. 

This book says a lot of important things about the state of justice in America. However, I think one could come away with the same conclusions if they read the first hand accounts of students who survived not just the Dozier School, but juvenile detention centers across the nation.

Two stars feels very low but if I'm being very honest, I really didn't enjoy the writing. I'm glad that this book introduced me to the story of the Dozier School so I can further read about the experiences of the students.

The Hissing Saint

I couldn't help but compare this book with Alex Haley's Roots. Both books deal with similar themes albeit in completely different timelines. Where Roots took on the extreme cruelty of Slavery and traced its subsequent dissolution through generations of a family, Nickel Boys constrains itself to the events that transpired within the walls of a correctional facility for juveniles in a milieu when equal rights for Black people was still a dream.

Where Roots was brutal and unfettered in it's description of the brutality of the time, Nickel Boys often seems to bring the reader to the brink of horror and then let's you fill in the details. In doing so it forces the reader to look in with a lens of tragedy and sadness rather than naked rage mirroring the teachings of Martin Luther King that the book so often quotes.

Cheri McElroy

This is a hard book to rate or talk about. I will say Colson Whitehead is a poet who breaks my heart with his stories. This story asks this question: Do you act out of agape love, even when it costs us? When treated in the worst ways imaginable? Elwood’s choice will haunt me, as it did Turner. Highly recommended.

Baylie Madison

Theme/Plot: It took me a really long time to finish this book. Granted, it was in part due to the fact that I was reading it during a busy time in my semester, but I also think the book was slower in some parts. This is not necessarily a criticism, just more of an observation. However, there definitely was a clear storyline and there were definitely parts that got my heart racing.
	Some notable sections for me were the boxing match and Elwood’s introduction. 
Characters: The characters were definitely the highlight of the book. Elwood’s undying hope and reference to MLK were vital to the message of the story, and Elwood just in general goes through the most notable changes as our narrator.
My favorite character, however, is Turner. Turner is so layered and really brings out the underlying disappointment this time had to endure. He is so well crafted, being a mentor for Elwood while in Nickel, but also serving as a symbol of contrast to the movement of the time. Turner does not believe in holding onto hope after going through Nickel, and in the segregated and racist world in general. He forces Elwood to question and justify his hope and perseverance. Both boys learn endless lessons from each other. 
Writing: Whitehead is a particularly talented individual. He baffled me with his elegant way of attacking brutal ideas and actions. He seamlessly weaves together the storylines of the characters, allowing you to learn about more than just Elwood. Also, the most intense aspect was the chronology. Due to the intro being written in the earlier pages, it always you to feel secure in that you know characters make it. This tricked me into letting my guard down and I was NOT prepared for the heartbreak of the ending, particularly the epilogue.

Ilham Akbarli

Yəqin ki, son illərin ən yaxşı romanını oxudum deyə bilərəm. Müəllif onsuzda güclü olan hekayəni kiçik bir fəndlə mükəmməlləşdirib. Nickel uşaq həbsxanasında - Azərbaycanda bu tip yerlərə səhv etmirəmsə, uşaq tərbiyə mərkəzi deyirlər - baş verənləri bir uşaq qəhrəmanın gözündən danışan kitab Amerikanın qaranlıq tərəflərini və cəmiyyətin nələrdən keçdiyini göstərir. Təbii ki, bütün bu dəyişimi bir uşağın taleyi üzərindən göstərmək də əsəri daha güclü edir. Amerikada hal-hazırda baş verən irqçilik məsələlərinin fonunda kitab daha da dəyər qazanır. Kitabda bəhs edilən məkan və uşaqlar uydurma olsa da, sonda müəllif əslində hansı hadisələrdən bu hekayəni yaratdığını göstərir. 
Colson Whitehead son illərin ən yaxşı romançılarından hesab olunur, mütləq bir neçə əsərini daha oxuyacam.

Celeste Richardson

The Nickel Boys is a brilliant, infuriating look into a fictional reform school inspired by a very real one. The fact that such horror took place in reality is deeply disturbing but, when held against the more well-known dark parts of our nation’s history, is sadly in no way surprising. The inherent racism in such places, especially in the South and especially when given such loose supervision, isn’t something those involved have even tried very hard to hide until the past few decades.

Poor Elwood is just about the unluckiest boy ever. There’s little that’s less fair than someone who does everything right still finding themselves footing the blame for someone else’s crimes. I cared more about Elwood than I did the protagonists of The Underground Railroad, because he was actually given enough time to develop as a character before the central theme of the novel came into play. He was a unique, interesting, driven, morally upright young man who won me over immediately.

However, in similar fashion to my experience with The Underground Railroad, I went from caring about the protagonist as an individual to seeing them as little more than a conduit for the story. I think this is just the way in which Whitehead tells his stories. His writing is impeccable, but something about this shift in tone puts me into a more academic mindset in a setting where I feel almost guilty for not experiencing more emotional resonance. Which means that this rating is entirely subjective. I completely understand why The Nickel Boys won the Pulitzer in 2020. It’s timely and powerful and serves as a call to arms in reforming such institutions and bringing into the light the darkness of their pasts. I simply found the (again, very subjective) emotional disconnect jarring.

Victoria P

whitehead’s writing is truly amazing, the story was so eye opening and just a teaspoon of what black people had to go through. the plot twist at the end made a lump in my throat

This was so tough to read, and I think everyone should. Beautifully written, heartbreaking and honest, this story needs to be told and heard. Until we actually force change, these are the voices that need to be heard the loudest (and even then.)

Summer Stanley

This was so tough to read, and I think everyone should. Beautifully written, heartbreaking and honest, this story needs to be told and heard. Until we actually force change, these are the voices that need to be heard the loudest (and even then.)




Emma Friedheim

I LOVED this. Absolutely beautiful writing. And that ending!!!

Elizabeth Moore

“You got to let them think they know what’s going on. They see it with their own eyes, distract themselves with that, so they can’t see the bigger game.”

I’m dumbfounded by how much this story impacted me. I got all the way through the book to the very end without breaking down, still deeply impacted and shaken but not sobbing and also a shade smug for feeling like I’d predicted how the story was going to end just from reading the Prologue. Then I read the very last page and before I could get through the final paragraph the book went white-hot in my hands and I literally dropped it on the ground. Waterworks commenced, all those tears that I’d predicted and prepared and preemptively steeled away throughout the course of this sad, terrible, beautiful book, and I cried all night and then started crying again this morning (clearly I was in no shape to right a review when I completed this book seeing as I couldn’t even see or stop shaking).

The Nickel Boys is a story about young humans who get stuck in a terrible, evil place; a self-proclaimed “moral reform” school for boys that’s really a perverted, horrifying prison hiding in plain sight. Boys end up here as penance for various sins; getting caught smoking a cigarette, being abandoned by their parents, hitching a ride in the wrong car on the way to see the college campus where they’ll get start to take accelerated courses in a few days. White and Black boys are imprisoned for their youth-hood and hobbled for the rest of their lives, because there’s no way you can learn to be normal when you get out of a place like this. And while the white boys get it bad, the Black boys get it worse. The physical abuse is gut-wrenching and the psychological abuse is worse - this place doesn’t need any fences or guards because children are broken down early and virtually enough to know there is no safety or hope waiting for them if the step over the boundary line of The Nickel School.

Equally as powerful as the story itself is the way Mr. Whitehead writes. The physical and sexual abuses, though a constant theme in the story, happen largely off the page, and Mr. Whitehead never dwells on the details - he doesn’t need to. He knows that stating the facts is enough, because the facts are vomit-inducing even without a play-by-play. However, the psychological abuse that these boys endure lives through every sentence. And in equal turns, in spare, declarative sentences, he builds up earthquakes of trauma and injustice, and evil and abuse, friendship and survival in short, simple sentences. 

Mr. Whitehead is a master of restrained prose and significant detail; the reason this story is so short is because he can more powerfully and more cleanly achieve in 200 pages what other authors would need at least 400 to even attempt to match. And his command of the story structure is unmatched. There is not one sentence that doesn’t need to be there, not one flash forward or flashback or detail out of place; a truth that is ever more apparent as the story simultaneously hurtles and hobbles toward the end. 

The story of The Nickel Boys And the story of the evil around them always goes back to the conman’s wisdom imparted to turner Turner in his fleeting “free world” childhood, let them think they know what the bigger game is, when really they have no clue:

Make them believe they are worth nothing, so they never see that they have dignity and are worth everything.

Let the boys think they can earn their freedom through their obedient choices, when really they are nothing more than slaves.

Let the biggest threats of all think all they have to do is lay low enough to avoid their pain, and you’ll never worry about them waking from their slumber of submission, realizing how scared and angry they really are. 

Let the oppressors think they’ve got the control, when they can’t see that the human spirit will still find ways to seek friendship, revenge, dignity, and ultimately escape. 

And, of course, let the audience think they know what they’re reading, completely unaware of the bag of bricks that will inevitably hit them - no matter how clever they think they are (and man I thought I was clever).


This is a story that every single person everywhere should read. It will change your life, it will slap you in the face, it will wake you up to how deeply and brutally racism and injustice lives in our history and how much we’ve chosen to slumber through it - or how much those whom it impacts have been forced to slumber through it. It will make you scream at humanity but also cling for dear life to the power of friendship and the beauty of never forgetting or giving up - even when your fate is already written for you by someone else.

The Nickel Boys is Colson Whitehead's follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning bestseller The Underground Railroad, in which he dramatises another strand of United States history, this time through the story of two boys sentenced to a stretch in a hellish reform school in Jim-Crow-era Florida.

avery byard

This historic fiction novel is a heart wrenching story of friendship between two boys under horrific circumstances. Whitehead narrates through a number of unreliable characters. Beautifully written and thought provoking. 

As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men." In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy.

Skye Sherman

What an incredible read—so much heaviness packed into such a little book. Whitehead chooses each word and crafts each sentence perfectly, yet so much of what he says is in what he DOESN’T say. The reader perceives between the lines to understand the unspeakable gravity and horror of many situations presented in the book, often turning the page with a sense of doom/dread. Such a weighty, heartbreaking, and horrifying subject matter—yet the reader feels empowered and compelled not to look away but to continue on through the book. I was totally shocked by the twist at the very end but it made this story all the more somber and sobering, and I appreciated the heartwarming tie-in on the very last page. Whitehead really did a marvelous job of both telling this story—shedding light on an unfortunately real place—and taking the reader on a deftly handled emotional journey. I want to read all his books now!

Alisa

The Nickel Boys is one of those books where I found myself drawn in by the writing and engaged with the story, but simultaneously dreading whatever awful thing comes next (see also: The Road). I'm so glad I stuck with it, especially because it doesn't reveal the full extent of its brilliance until the end.

Audri Green

I liked this book very much! The characters are so easy to love and feel sympathetic for. I think that it was a little hard to follow because the timeline was very confusing. It shifts between time periods without letting you know any dates and it took away from the plot of the whole story. Still a beautiful and heartbreaking read.

Mariana Correia

I haven’t decided on the rating but this book... It was complex but in an intriguing, positive way. My perception of the narrator literally changed like 50 pages to the end of the book. A raw take on racial discrimination. I learned so much. I empathized with all of the characters. Elwood’s characters is absolutely phenomenal and inspiring! The book is 208 pages long but we get so much character development and details from the narrative it conveys. The “plot twists”, the moments of high tension, the moments of pure fucking injustice that I just wanted to enter the book and knock some white racists out... it wasn’t predictable which I liked. I thought it started with person x being the narrator but I was damn wrong. The writing was amazing, some passages and chapter more descriptive than others but I think it was necessary to set up the environment for the events that took place. Truly recommend, despite being a hard, blood boiling read. The ending was a well executed full circle moment which I loved! Totally understand why this one has won prizes!

KADY BURNS

Beautifully written. The story itself was a little slow and I didn't really enjoy the last part. But now I want to go learn about school it was based off of.

Kooky

Jamie

Whitehead's sheer literary skill is so evident in the pages of this short, yet expansive novel. The prose itself is not difficult to read, but the cruelty and injustice in the pages made me pause between chapters to weep and mourn before continuing.

Maria-Stefania Popa

“Horror comics, he’d noticed, delivered two kinds of punishment - completely undeserved, and sinister justice for the wicked. He placed his current misfortune in the former category and waited to turn the page.”

Rose Stanley

Sixth book of Tis the Damn Readathon

Album: Red
Prompt: Red (Read a book with red on the cover)

A faster read and a narrower focus than The Underground Railroad, but just as intense. Elwood's story is all the more heart-breaking and rage-inducing for being based on the real-life, within-living-memory Dozier School for Boys (Google it and join me in my rage). 

Honestly, it is depressing how easily humans can dehumanise other humans.

They were CHILDREN, for crying out loud. 

Definitely a story that needs to be heard. Thanks to Colson Whitehead for telling it.

The Nickel Boys

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