a very clever book from a really sharp writer that i realized too late was a satire. i would have thought that names would have been enough for me and he does pursue some really interesting lines of thought but when all is said and done i would wish for more meat and less cucumber sandwich. on the fence between two and three stars.

The night after I finished this book, I dreamed: shuttlebus, shuttlebus, shuttlebus.For those who haven't yet read it, and thus won't catch that reference, let me say:Colson Whitehead has written a profound book about superficiality. It's at once about the modern problem of the branding of America and the abiding questions (with which philosophers have wrestled for centuries) about the relationship of language to reality. With regard to the latter, it probes the potentially corrosive effects of

I really wanted to like this book more. But, alas, it was the second book in a row that I read that had an unnamed, black, male author and I found the lack of committment to a character and the need to embrace the "everyman" trite and annoying. It made much more sense in this novel, due to the fact that the narrator is a nomenclature consultant by trade, but the inability to really connect with him made the prose feel plastic and hard to empathize with. Whitehead's brilliant, semantic insights m...

Colson Whitehead is so damn smart. Maybe too smart for me sometimes. But I want to read everything he's written, because he challenges me. A nameless "nomenclature consultant" with a limp who's had a bit of a mental breakdown is hired to help rebrand the ton of Winthrop. He is wooed by the three city council members: a wacky descendant of the original Winthrop, a descendant of one of the original black settlers, and a wealthy businessman who wants to bring jobs and rename it New Prospera. Our na...

Very smart, very funny. A bit reminiscent of Pynchon, but far less annoying. I'm not so big on satire -- I find it cold -- but I enjoyed this very much.

A hilarious and scathing satire, this is the story of a town in want of a new name and the man in charge of selecting that name. There are three factions, all with their own wants/needs/desires and claims on history:--First are the black families, the descendants of the first settlers of the land, free men and women, who want to return to the town's first name: Freedom.--Second is the sole surviving member of the family Winthrop, who wants to keep using the old name for posterity. The original W...

3.5 stars.For all the apparent unsubtlety of this novel - should the town at the center of the plot be called Freedom, Winthrop, or New Prospera? - there's are wonderful nuances of thought and expression in the prose. I love Whitehead's ruminations on the power of names, that they can make or unmake us, sell something, preserve something, obscure something, and we may not know which at the time. Similarly, the sub-plot about Apex band-aids is fascinating, not least of which because it contains r...

Company crossed with Paradise. Our narrator is a nomenclature consultant. He tells companies what to call their new cars, drugs, floor polishes, and widgets. But of late, ever since "the incident," he's been avoiding work, people, and even hygiene in favor of hiding out at home. He's been roped back in for one last job -- arbitrating a naming dispute in what is now known as Winthrop and what might soon be rechristened New Prospera or might revert to being Freedom. The town was founded by newly f...

I recommend the audio book. At under six hours, it seems ideal for a long day's drive or a week's commute. It hits the right sweet spot between too complex to follow and too simple to entertain. It treats consumer culture with the disrespect it deserves, but is not tiresome or hectoring. It is occasionally funny. For students searching for a paper topic: compare this book with Pattern Recognition by William Gibson.

A consultant is hired to choose a name for small town. The African Americans escaping slavery who first settled it named it Freedom. Then a family named Winthrop put a barb wire factory there and renamed the town after themselves. Now a wealthy software engineer who has moved back home and is trying to encourage others to move there wants a more forward- thinking town name. The consultant is well-known, well- paid and won an award for his naming ability. He named the bandage branded Apex, that i...

Colson Whitehead is one of those writers who is so eloquent, whose prose is so elegant and clear, it makes my best efforts look like those of a hack.This deceptively slim novel opens a world of ideas. The protagonist is an unnamed "nomenclature consultant" a professional paid for naming products who is hired to rename a town. He negotiates councilmember politics, the cultural and economic and racial history of the town, as well as his own reclusiveness following a strange physical accident. A qu...

Whitehead doesn't seem to be getting the respect he deserves. My first impressions were disbelief and smugness. A story about a nomenclature consultant? Sure. Ok. We're going to play with words, meanings, names, language, etc. That hasn't been done before. But as I continued with Apex Hides the Hurt I saw how Whitehead not only expands the many theoretical and abstract discussions about the meaning of language, he gives those discussions life. He puts meat on the abstract bones. And that's bold,...

I once had a job very similar to that of "nomenclature consultant," so it's possible that most of my enjoyment comes from the well-deserved skewering of meetings that bear eerie resemblance to many I've sat through. But I think there's a lot to enjoy here even for those who have thankfully been spared the world of corporate image sculpting: sharp prose (with an ear for repetition that works particularly well in audio), musings on the nature of identity, and a good balance between satire and stor...

A nameless nomenclature consultant who’s had a bit of a nervous breakdown is hired by a small town to lend his expertise to the renaming of their community. This book didn’t really work for me. I found the prose very flat, and the way the plot progressed—interspersed with flashbacks exploring the reasons behind the protagonist’s meltdown—offered no surprises. I felt like—even though Whitehead clearly had some interesting ideas about community, race, identity, and history—I’d read this book befor...

It might be a while before I get to Whitehead's latest, but this one is first-rate, American, idea-rich fiction.

Every time I read a book by Colton Whitehead, I need a dictionary to parse through his extraordinary vocabulary. This was no exception. This book was a rich commentary on capitalism, American race relations, and our collective failure to actually address problems in our country. I’d highly recommend, but also would recommend not reading it during the holidays/for relaxation since it’s a bit intense.

This is such a fascinating premise, about a guy who is a professional namer of things, from medecine to cosmetics to towns. But Whitehead just didn't go far enough or do enough with it, and it all sort of fell flat and left me feeling very unsatisfied.

After reading a few different reviews for this book, it feels like I might be one of few readers who really GETS it. Such a brilliant mix of wordplay, corporate cynicism, satire, marketing absurdity, and, let's face it, historical fiction.Ultimately this is a book about symbolism. Ostensibly, there is the symbolism held within an object's name, and an absurd exploration into the (presumably fictionalised) culture of nomenclature consulting. More intriguing though are all the other layers of symb...

Had this been the first book of Colson Whitehead’s that I had read, I may not have decided to read him again, but alas, this is not the first book of his that I had the pleasure of reading, with the first being Underground Railroad, which was amazing! I find that Whitehead is an author who has a wide variety of subjects to write about, which a lot of authors do not, they stay in one area and do not branch out. I appreciate this of Whitehead very much! This book was very readable, and somewhat en...

What’s a nomenclature consultant? Everything is in the name, it seems. The story centers around the consultant, a man who has had career successes that had its zenith with Apex, a low-quality version of Bandaids, and now is hired to name or rename a town.The town has history. Like all towns. Some of it is advertised and some of it is forgotten or buried. The consultant has very specific rules, and one is that the name selected must be implemented and must remain in place for at least one year.At...