If Colson Whitehead writes it, then I will read it.

4 stars for a book about Harlem, New York city, from the late 50s to the late 60s. The author calls this book "a love letter to Harlem.". This book is more about the changes in culture than about crime . It is narrated by Ray Carney, son of Mike Carney, a small time crook. Ray wants to go straight and opens a furniture store. But he accepts merchandise from questionable people to sell. His contacts with the underworld bring him into dangerous situations. How he resolves them amid the changes in

Division’s central to Colson Whitehead’s impressive, Harlem-based novel: the divide between black and white America; the divide that inspired Langston Hughes’s A Dream Deferred; the divided self of Du Bois's concept of double consciousness. In Whitehead’s episodic narrative these resonate through Ray Carney, who’s simultaneously hero and anti-hero. It’s 1959 when Carney’s introduced and he’s already on the road towards achieving a version of the American Dream – an era when that myth still held

The dialogue and action were so shrouded in euphemism, so opaque in meaning and intention, alternatively dull and worrisome, that no one could decide what the play was about, if they understood it, let alone enjoyed it. I can't help but think Colson Whitehead was talking about this very book when he wrote that prescient line into it.Harlem Shuffle is a set of three loosely-related stories about furniture salesman and reluctant crook Ray Carney. He wants to lead an honest life, but that's not

Beautiful prose but light on plot and action.Ray Carney, situated in Harlem, owns and operates a furniture store in Harlem. Carney is straddling two worlds though: the up and up furniture store and the goods that must have fallen off a truck somewhere. Will these two worlds collide? How will Carney navigate these two worlds?Harlem Shuffle is my first Whitehead novel who is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. The prose of the book was at its finest. Whitehead has a very strong command of ver...

“…Carney knew crime’s hours when he saw them – dorvay was crooked heaven, when the straight world slept and the bent got to work. An arena for thieving and scores, break-ins and hijacks, when the con man polishes the bait and the embezzler cooks the books. In-between things: night and day, rest and duty, the no-good and the up-and-up. Pick up a crowbar, you know the in-between is where all the shit goes down.”“Carney didn’t like the notion of dumping bodies in the back of his truck, deceased or

Have you ever read a book that you knew was objectively good, but you just couldn’t get into? That was this book for me unfortunately. Colson Whitehead created a rich, beautiful world with his depiction of Harlem and gorgeous prose, but his characters didn't resonate with me as they have previously. I just couldn't connect with this. It was a struggle to pick up and almost made it back to the library unfinished, whereas I normally finish things within a day or two. His last (The Nickel Boys), I

As the only living writer who’s won two Pulitzer Prizes for fiction — and a National Book Award and a MacArthur “genius” grant — Colson Whitehead risks growing so encrusted with literary prestige that he’s not allowed to have any fun.But clearly that’s not holding him down.Yes, Whitehead wrote one of the greatest historical novels about slavery (“The Underground Railroad”), and his last novel was a grisly story — based on real events — about a deadly juvenile detention center in Florida (“The Ni...

The award winning Colson shifts genres to write a light hearted and beautifully crafted piece of multilayered historical fiction, crime and family drama, an astutely observed and atmospherically vibrant picture of 1950s and 1960s New York City's Harlem. It depicts the hustles and bustle, the culture, the community, detailing and describing the neighbourhoods, with its wide ranging cast of diverse characters, the offbeat, the high, the low and the shady, amidst a background of social and politica...

Having read two of Mr Whitehead's novels, this one was on top of my list. What a total surprise it was! A definite and unexpected shift into Harlem in the 1960s, with its bitter humour and portrayal of people and places so well-written that visualising them was not a problem for me. The beginning was rather slow and it took me a little time to get involved mainly due to my lack of knowledge what Harlem was like six decades ago. After some time though I felt more secure in the company of Ray and

I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into when I chose to read this book — I had read plenty ‘about it’. Even before it was released in September of this year — I listened to Colson Whitehead speak about how much fun he had writing it — the first book of a series.I laughed when he said, “yeah, something a little different”….when his other two novels : “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys” were each very different from each also. But, yes….‘something’ a little differen...

‘No New Frontier stretched before him, endless and bountiful — that was for white folks — but this new land was a few blocks at least and in Harlem a few blocks was everything. A few blocks was the difference between strivers and crooks, between opportunity and the hard scrabble.’ What’s a literary superstar to do after winning back-to-back Pulitzers for novels dealing with the more brutal aspects of African-American history? If you’re Colson Whitehead it seems the answer is: write a crime ca

i have tried to pick up this book four times, and through no fault of the book's own, i have failed to get past the 25 page mark all four times. nevertheless we persist.update: i have failed once again.---------------------a heist story written by colson whitehead?! what did i do to deserve this

2.5 stars: I really wanted to love “Harlem Shuffle” by Colson Whitehead. I’ve read his previous works and enjoyed his literary style. This style didn’t work for me in his story of a shifty, almost crooked, black man in 1960’s Harlem.I give a novel 50 pages, and if I’m not into it, I abandon. Well, this is Colson, so I persevered. I read almost 2/3 of the story, was about to abandon it, and then it picked up. Did it take over 200 pages to get into the rhythm? Not sure. For me, Whitehead took his

Colton Whitehead’s latest is a return to 1959-1961 Harlem. He totally evokes the feel of the time and place. Each one of his words served to bring up the sights, smells and sounds of the place. His descriptions had me in their thrall. It was impossible not to see every scene, so lush were the descriptions. Ray Carney might be the son of a petty thief, but he seems himself as an upstanding citizen. He was “only slightly bent when it came to being crooked”, not above taking something that had fall...

This novel has been described as a crime story . I not interested in crime stories and I only read it because Colson Whitehead wrote it .But as I expected, it was much more than about heists and fences and gangsters . Taking place in Harlem in 1959, 1961 and 1964, it’s a striking portrayal of a time and place reflecting on the racism then and there causing us to reflect on the racism here and now. It’s a captivating story of a man who “was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked …” , an...

There are going to be two different types of readers of this book: those who are familiar with Whitehead's full backlist and those who only know THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD and NICKEL BOYS. That latter group is going to be very confused by this book, but if you dive into Whitehead's backlist you know that he switches genres constantly and the only rule is to expect to be surprised by whatever he does next. This is a crime novel in the style of the mid-20th-century, there are all kinds of crooked ty...

I suspected this novel wouldn't be for me and unfortunately I was right. Because it is written by Whitehead, there is plenty of good stuff here - a great character in furniture salesman Ray Carney, atmospheric details of Harlem in the 1960s (and racist NYC) and some laugh-out-loud humor. But it didn't come together for me. All the colorful crooks and the wheeling and dealing bored me. I went back and forth between audio and print but interest waned with both.

An elevated crime novelColson Whitehead is incapable of writing a bad or a dull sentence. And like the late John Updike, he can make any subject pulse with life. It’s late 50s Harlem, and Ray Carney is trying to make his way up the social and financial ladder as the owner of a furniture store in the predominantly Black and Latino neighbourhood. He’s got a little side hustle buying and reselling hot goods, but mostly he wants to stick to the straight and narrow and provide for his wife Elizabeth,...

This story, set in Harlem, begins in 1959 with Ray Carney, a man who owns a furniture and appliance store on 125th Street, the ‘main street’ of Harlem, a street that will also come to be known as Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard years later. But that is twenty-five years in the future as this begins. To those who know or have dealt with Ray, he is a decent guy, trying to make a decent living selling furniture at a fair price, only slightly bent when it comes to being crooked. A likeable guy to...