I loved this novel. It is rich with detail, the plot twists in a really interesting way, the novel's structure is pretty brilliant and overall, this is an ambitious book that was really well executed. It is a coming of age story where that coming of age is warped by the atrocities of a school for boys in segregated Florida. As Elwood awakens to the civil rights movement, he is stripped of nearly all his rights. The more he understands the freedom he deserves, the less freedom he has and that jux...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize!Colson Whitehead confirms his position as a phenomenal writer with this ostensibly heartbreaking and harrowing fictional storytelling, but which is informed by the darkest, most shameful, and ugliest period of American history explored through the lives of two young boys, set in the early 1960s Civil Rights time and all the horrors of the Jim Crow era in Frenchtown, segregated Tallahassee, Florida. Whitehead writes in understated and subtly nuanced prose, all the mor...

I was about as disappointed by this book as I was with the author's Pulitzer winning The Underground Railroad. I know it is a document based on true stories of an awful reform school in Florida (Dozier), but the writing just wasn't that great. There is a shift in perspective near the end that seems to invalidate half of what preceded and besides that, it was fairly predictable. I found the descriptions lackluster, the characters two-dimensional and the plot singularly lacking in structure. I am

This novel hit me as relatively lifeless, and absolutely predictable. After getting to the last page and closing the book I discovered I had fallen into a kind of mourning. I missed the "Pre-Underground-Railroad" Colson Whitehead. I missed the author who wrote Zone One and The Intuitionist. Colson Whitehead is an author with a unique gift, and he belongs in a rarified group of unique, individualistic, contemporary black voices along with Percival Everett and Mat Johnson and Walter Mosley...autho...

Five blood freezing, rage boiler, pump squeezer, creator of several lumps on your throat, tear jerker, wake up call for all the injustice, unacceptable, unfair wrongdoings of the system stars! As soon as I closed the book, I just sat for at least two hours, paralyzed, did nothing, lost, confused, agitated, speechless, deeply, wholeheartedly, painfully sorry for the characters and all the suffering they had to endure. The worst thing is I didn’t read a fiction, I definitely read something based o...

with a tightly plotted and masterfully crafted story, this book absolutely demands to be read. i can only say that i think it would have benefitted from a less nonfiction-esque writing style at times, but even with my writing preferences i definitely see why this has received so much praise and would recommend it to anyone.

The Nickel Boys, a book about the horrors of a reformatory school in 1960s Southern USA, was my first experience reading Colson Whitehead. I was excited to read this literary powerhouse, author of nine novels, one of which won the Pulitzer prize in 2017. As I dug into the book, I recognised right away that it is written very well - some might say flawlessly. In fact I wouldn't dare to critique it on that level. Its structure, pacing, etc are exemplary.Exemplary, yet, I was left wanting. I wanted...

[Book #3 for my grad school YA class: a historical fiction & crossover book]This book has left me speechless. It will absolutely stick with me for a long time. Please read this and research the Dozier School for Boys!

Before starting this novel, I had read several interviews with Colson Whitehead, and reading them added to my understanding of THE NICKEL BOYS. Mr Whitehead chose to write about a piece of history which even he had known nothing about before 2014: a reform school for boys which operated for decades and where children were treated with cruelty and brutality. A deeply disturbing and shocking novel about two black boys in the 1960s who are sent to the so-called reform school, The Nickel Academy, wh...

Tallahassee, Florida, 1960's and Elwood a young black boy has big plans. He believes MLK that change is coming soon, that non violence and forgiveness with eventually free their people. Allow them the same rights as whites. But, this is the Jim Crow south and Elwood, with a belief in his bright future, will find himself in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Sent to the Nickel Academy, said to be a place that straightens out those on the wrong place. As Elwood tries to survive in this hellish pl...

Quick update:Meeting Colson Whitehead last night was great. He was so hilarious!!! I don’t think one person in the room expected him to be as funny as he was. A gorgeous man - funnier than any of us could imagine. He stayed away from the seriousness of the topics in his books. A little quote from Colson about book genres. Colson said there are only 2 types of books in the world: “those you like, and those you don’t”. Super man... Super author...Super fun listening to him speak. Audiobook…narrate...

Words fail me in trying to express how good this book is. What I can say is go buy and read it immediately. I read it over a week ago and it is still running through my mind. I anticipate it will continue to do so for quite some time. The best book I’ve read this year, and I’ve read quite a few. A don’t miss read.

4.5 stars for a great book and sad times all around. Appreciate the way the main characters question Dr. King’s notion of still loving those who are cruel to you. Elwood’s precociousness and Turner’s heroism are so admirable and endearing. The plot twist is great too. Whitehead is a skilled writer but I do wish his prose opened up to more of Elwood’s emotional psyche rather than his journalistic tone, which limits the internal narrative and emotional experience. Since this is a story based on re...

True to form, Colson Whitehead delivers another well-written, deep story that while incredibly devastating, deserves to be told. The Nickel Boys is fictional account based on the true, horrifying Dozier School for Boys in good ol’ Florida, which Whitehead references at both the beginning and end of the book. ”You can hide a lot in an acre, in the dirt.” I was immediately a fan of Elwood, the main character, a virtuous teenage student, following rules, respecting authority, and admiring Dr. Marti...

I don’t think there is anything original that I can say that hasn’t already been said about this book. I can only add my 5 well deserved stars and repeat what others have said. It’s powerful, painful and such an important book to read. This is a fictional account based on a horrific place, a real place, a reform school in Florida in the 1960’s, where young boys, in particular young black boys were abused physically, sexually, emotionally and in some cases murdered. It’s gut wrenching and heartbr...

What's happening? Why was I bored by a book so many loved, especially since its subject should have affected me a great deal? The introduction was promising. The novel itself left me disconnected and detached, not to mention I had this nagging feeling that I'd read this story before. The writing was straight forward if I'm being honest, I expected it to be a bit more literary.The story is important, kudos to Whitehead for bringing it to our attention. My brain was, of course, horrified, but my h...

"We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthwhile, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness." (Martin Luther King Jr, Britannica.com)[Martin Luther King at Zion Hill - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6sqA...] ***"Even in death the boys were trouble.""The boys could have been many things had they not been ruined by that place."(Florida reform school, Wikipedia.org) The Nickel Bo

The thought of this book stirs up a pain so sharp it almost seems my flesh lay open.There is so much I can’t figure out how to say in words right now. My heart feels as raw as a burn; a feeling made all the more resonant by the realization that the story is inspired by true events, that it captures between its pages the remembered violence of America's history—fathomless and ugly. Colson Whitehead refuses to do their reader the dishonor of the lies, the comfortable omissions, and I'm glad for it...

(revised review - 5 stars)“It was quite a sight, all the boys, big and small, hustling in unified purpose, paint on their chins, the chucks wobbling as they ferried the cans of Dixie.” As part of their “community service,” The Nickel Boys paint buildings Dixie White, while avoiding sadistic and potentially fatal beatings delivered via a leather strap named Black Beauty. The boys, “cheaper than a dime-a-dance and you got more for your money, or so they used to say,” are in segregated juvenile det...

A world of injustice or the truer, biding world? The Nickel Boys melds When They See Us with The Shawshank Redemption and Colson Whitehead’s faultless instincts as a novelist. Some books are 5 stars because they strike a chord with your own specific reading tastes; some are 5 stars because they are so good everybody should read them. This book is firmly in the latter category.The Nickel Boys is about a reformatory school for boys (effectively a prison) during the Jim Crow years, based on a re...