Based on the true story of a reform school for boys in Florida, which made it so much better for me. I found it fascinating in that I couldn't believe this actually happened, and could possibly still be happening. Elwood is a good boy. He studies hard, stays out of trouble, and lives with his grandmother after his mother and father took off. His teacher recommends him for a special accelerated program to take courses at the local college, but in order to get there he has to hitchhike. But when the car is pulled over by the cops and it's discovered to be stolen, they send Elwood to the Nickel school. A black boy in 1960s Florida in a stolen car must have done something wrong. Life was very hard at Nickel. There were beatings and rapes, the food was terrible, and the black boys were treated worse than the white boys. Soon after getting there, Elwood was beaten badly and ended up in the infirmary. There he met Turner who showed him the ropes and helped get him an easy assignment doing 'community service,' which was essentially free labor for the rich people in town. That was ok, though. It was better than working in the fields at the school. The book fast forwards to the present where Elwood is doing well for himself. He owns his own moving company and has a nice life. Of course, there is a twist at the end that is fantastic.

Wow. Wow. Wow. This book. This was tough to read, and it took me forever to get through because of how difficult it was to digest (the subject matter, not the writing!) and how horrifying it was. But I didn't want it to end. I would read Colson Whitehead writing about anything, but this story, based on a true story, is riveting and heartbreaking. A must-read for anyone and everyone.

As a young black man in Tallahassee, Florida, in the early 1960s, Elwood Curtis has a vision for his life: progress through peace, the Civil Rights movement, and a challenging slate of college courses. But in an almost absurdly tragic turn of events, he hitches a ride in a stolen car. Thus begins his time at Nickel Academy, a Florida reform school. Though he endures terrible abuse at Nickel, the friendship of another boy named Turner sustains him. Likewise, Turner trusts and confides in Elwood. Interspersed chapters from Elwood’s adult life in New York City provide glimpses of the lasting impact of the trauma suffered all those years before. Just as Elwood tries “without success to figure out why his life had bent to this wretched avenue,” so will the reader of this virtuosic novel. It’s difficult to find words that haven’t already been used to praise Colson Whitehead’s unique body of work, but The Nickel Boys is truly something special.

I was given a free copy of this book from #netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Colson Whitehead writes with beautiful prose no matter the subject. In this case, the story is about a group of boys who are imprisoned at the Nickel School for boys as punishment for a crime or perceived crime that they committed. The boys are made to do hard work and are often beaten. Their terms in the school are up to the prison guards, as they have not set time that they have to serve. This book covers the story of Elwood and his fate at the school. Never a comfortable read, but ALWAYS a good read with Mr. Whitehead. Recommend!

I was not as impressed as most with this title. It felt a tad disjointed, the way the stories came and went, especially the last half. However, it is an important story to tell and Colson Whitehead is one of the premier storytellers to tell it. I enjoyed the writing and the story itself.

Colson Whitehead has done it again. This is fantastic story-telling, impressive characterisation and twists and turns I was never expecting. Dare I say I might even prefer this to The Underground Railroad? Although both novels are spectacular.

I didn't fully know what I was getting into with this book. I have a habit of not always reading the blurb of books by authors I know and trust to deliver. Even though you know from the blurb that Elwood is going to end up at Nickel, Whitehead does a great job of building up hope that maybe it won't happen, or maybe it won't be so bad. Or maybe that's just me being ever the optimist. Because Whitehead doesn't scrimp on Elwood's characterisation before he enters Nickel, it hurts even more when he is incarcerated and when he realises what the place really is.

What I love is how Whitehead jumped between the past and the present, continuing to give the reader hope and forcing the reader to persevere through the worst parts of the book, knowing there was a future to look forward to.

And then came the page I had to read three times to understand what had just happened. Oh, he hit me with a surprise moment and he got me good. #nospoilers.

The worst part is that Nickel is based on a real school that was in operation for over 100 years and many of horrors depicted in this book really happened in the Florida school. This is a beautiful blend of history, research and narration. And yes, it was a painful and uncomfortable read but was it brilliant? Absolutely.

This books is incredible. Having lived in Florida for 9 years, including when the unmarked graves were discovered, I had very limited knowledge on this story and the school. This book, while small, sheds light on a horrific moment in our history in such a brilliant way. My heart ached for the characters and the horrific trauma they faced. This is certainly an excellent book to incorporate into your curriculum for high school age and above.

I seriously think this was my favorite book of the year. Even though it was a tough read it was well written.

This is a haunting fictional story set in the Jim Crow South based on the real-life suffering endured at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida. A tragic misunderstanding sends young Elwood Curtis to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy. He tries desperately to hold onto Dr. King’s ringing assertion “Throw us in jail and we will still love you" even as he is surrounded by abuse, torture, segregation, and desolation. The story moves at a slow pace, but hang in there for a twist at the end.

I don't often give five star reviews, but this was fantastic. I have yet to read something by this author that I didn't thoroughly enjoy. Wow this was good.

Righteous anger propels this novel spired by the gross injustices perpetrated on young boys in the state of Florida during the 20th century.. Some of Whitehead's best writing to date. the characters of Elwood and Turner are engrossing and compelling.

It took longer than expected to read because of the slow pace. The Nickel Boys is fiction but I kept thinking about all the unfortunate, black boys who actually lived through this horror. Whitehead is an excellent writer who pays acute attention to detail. His description of NYC is spot on. You don’t just read the boys pain, you feel it with them. Misfortune lead most of the kids to Nickel Academy but it was the Academy that destroyed their lives.

This is the second book I've read by Colson Whitehead, the first one being The Underground Railroad which I thoroughly enjoyed. I knew I wouldn't be disappointed the his newest book The Nickel Boys, and I wasn't.. A fictional telling of a true time in our history. The Nickel Boys tell the story of Elwood, raised by his grandmother to be a good person, who ends up at Nickel for something that he didn't do. This book jumps into the past and the present but without the confusion that some authors seem to do. I highly recommend this book. It makes you angry and sad as it should. Thank you Mr. Whitehead for another great book.

This review has been submitted to Southern Literary Review.

The review has now been posted and SLR selected it as its August Read of the Month. http://southernlitreview.com/reviews/august-read-of-the-month-the-nickel-boys-by-colson-whitehead.htm

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Review by Claire Hamner Matturro

Colson Whitehead once more proves the sheer power of his talent with The Nickel Boys (Doubleday (July 16, 2019), a heartbreaking, chilling story about an innocent black youth sent to a hellish reform school in North Florida during the Jim Crow days. At once both restrained and searing, the story is devastating, more so given that while the book is fiction, it’s more true than not. The novel is based up factual accounts of what happened to boys and youths sent to the notorious Florida School for Boys, also known as the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, a so-called reform school run by the State of Florida near Marianna, FL. Investigators are still finding bodies of students from Dozier buried in hidden graves, their skeletons showing evidence of the violent injuries that put them in the secret burial spots.

In The Nickel Boys, Whitehead avoids detailed, head-on depictions of graphic violence, which makes the story simultaneously more bearable and yet more haunting. He leaves it up to the readers to imagine some of the worst beatings, but personalizes these with stories of youths literally beaten to death by guards. This is not a story for the weak stomach or the faint heart. Yet, it is such an important book that it should be read and understood in a primal way so that no one allows a school like this to ever flourish again. To what should be the eternal shame of Florida, the actual Dozier’s school exited from 1900 to 2011, and still appears in news stories as more evidence of atrocities emerge.

At the heart of the story, protagonist Elwood Curtis is a hard-working black youth who lives with grandmother, Harriet, in the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee. His parents long ago just took off, but his grandmother is more than able to raise him and is a force of power and a fountain of love for Elwood. She also raises him with a strict hand. Whitehead captures Harriet beautifully in these sentences: “She kept a sugarcane machete under her pillow for intruders, and it was difficult for Elwood to think that the old woman was afraid of anything. But fear was her fuel.”

Elwood receives “the best gift of his life on Christmas Day 1962, even if the ideas it put in his head were his undoing.” The gift was a record album of “Martin Luther King at Zion Hill,” a recorded collection of King’s speeches. After playing the record repeatedly, Elwood decides he is—as King insists—“as good as anybody.” For a black youth in 1962 in Jim Crow Tallahassee, FL, this is a radical and dangerous thought.
After participating in some racial protests and with the encouragement of a teacher, Elwood decides to enroll in the area’s black college. He has no means of getting to the school, so he hitchhikes. Unfortunately, the driver who picks him up just stole the car, and Elwood—despite his rather obvious innocence and his excellent reputation—ends up being sentenced to Nickel Academy, the fictitious Dozier’s reform school. While the state-owned Nickel Academy proclaims that it provides the "physical, intellectual and moral training" to turn delinquent boys and youths into "honorable and honest men," in fact the place is a hellhole of brutality.
Taking a page right out of the actual history of Dozier’s school, Whitehead paints an agonizing portrait of sadistic staff members who beat and rape students, deprive the students of state-supplied food which staffers sell to local restaurants, and intentionally kill youths who protest or even hint at fighting back or running away. Elwood, having been a naïve, well-behaved young person with no history of imprisonment, totally lacks the skills to survive in such a grotesque environment. Fortunately, a more savvy youth, Turner, takes Elwood under his wings. But even with Turner’s help, conditions and events only get worse for both youths.

The Nickel Boys, released this July, is so far a critical and commercial success as the book well deserves. The acclaim is no surprise as Whitehead is no stranger to accolades. His most recent previous book, The Underground Railroad, won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, as well as being an Oprah's Book Club selection, named a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Time, People and NPR book of the year and was a number one New York Times best-seller.

The Nickel Boys might suffer somewhat in comparison to The Underground Railroad, which is as close to a perfect book as has been written this decade. While both books use history to shape the story, The Underground Railroad used magical realism to bolster the story in contrast to the straight-forward, often sparse style in Nickel Boys. Yet, make no mistake, Nickel Boys with its sharp, direct narratives, is an excellent book even if it is not quite the perfection of The Underground Railroad.
Whitehead has a true and rare gift and he can nail a scene, an emotion, and a character in a few sharp words. His narrative excels in that regard, even as he moves the story forward.

As he does with characters, Whitehead also does with fear. The stark simplicity of “You can hide a lot in an acre, in the dirt” is as chilling as Elwood’s glimpse of the backs of two Nickel’s boys, with their “long lumpy lines of scars and what looked like burn marks.” The scars evidence the truth of the claims no one believed, or no one cared about, scars from their tenure in the “White House,” the place where youths were taken and whipped. Whitehead writes: "The white boys bruised differently than the black boys and called it the Ice Cream Factory because you came out with bruises of every color. The black boys called it the White House because that was its official name and it fit and didn't need to be embellished."

Elwood learns the hard way about those long lumpy lines of scars and the White House after he innocently tries to break up a fight. Yanked from his bed in the middle of the night, he is taken to the White House for a beating so severe he passes out, and wakes in the school’s infirmity injured so viciously he is unable to lay on his back. Whitehead spares readers too many of the brutal details, but does not spare readers from the impact of such beatings on the psyche of the tortured youths. Elwood’s beating endures beyond the actual bloody wounds, and "had him scarred all over, not just his legs," but the whipping “had weeviled deep into his personality."

As a cautionary tale, Nickel Boys excels. This is a book that should be required reading. One of the most important lessons is found in one of his early sentences. "Plenty of boys had talked of the secret graveyard before, but as it had ever been ... no one believed them until someone else said it."

Let’s be sure that if there is ever a next time, someone will believe.

It is a powerful story of two boys and how they handle this correctional school for boys. The school is the worst place you can think of in the South but these boys manage until one day things change. That was a twist I didn’t really see coming.

I'll be honest. I was a little nervous to read this book because I knew that it depicted the gruesome violence directed against African-American males at a fictionalized version of a brutal reform school in Florida. In both this and his previous novel, The Underground Railroad, Whitehead lays bare the racialized violence that threads through U.S. history, and there's no reason to expect that it will or should be a comfortable read.

Whitehead, though, is such a good storyteller that you are drawn into the narrative right away. He starts in the present with a University of South Florida student on an archeology project discovering Nickel Academy's secret graveyard. This unmarked graveyard is where Nickel buried students - mostly black students - who'd died under their brutal treatment. Whitehead brings all the actors to life and makes you care about the story immediately. When he shifts to the story of Elwood Curtis, a young man who's grown up listening to Martin Luther King and living with his grandmother in Tallahassee, the scene has been set for the story of this horrific place to be revealed.

But then Whitehead takes his time letting it unfold, starting with Elwood's youth and fully developing him as a character. By the time Elwood is sent to Nickel Academy, the groundwork has been laid to emphasize a sense of outrage at the racially-based miscarriage of justice that has cut short his education and promise. The reader is presented both with the spiteful brutality of the institution, as well as the brutality that comes of robbing black young men of a future. There are both white and black inmates at Nickel, but those on the black "campus" come in for the most vicious mistreatment.

Alongside the tale of Elwood's horrific experience at Nickel, and a post-Nickel storyline, Whitehead interweaves stories of other students at Nickel. I won't give away the details, but Whitehead gives a wide angle view of the institution's racism, corruption, and brutality. Because the stories are wide-ranging, the novel can feel a little disconnected at points, but it all comes together in the end.

This is an incredible book. It tells a crucial history that has been long buried and tells it in a compelling way. I completely recommend it.

3.75 stars - Thanks to Netgalley and Doubleday books for a chance to read and review this ARC. Published Jul 16, 2019.

Another winner by Whitehead. Having read Underground Railroad I was excited to see this book. Although feeling that this book was somewhat milder than Underground Railroad, I did enjoy the twists and turns that this book provided.

Whitehead based this fictional book on the true to life experiences of boys incarcerated at the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna Florida. In his acknowledgements he gives a number of other books and articles he used as reference for this book.

In the early 60's as Martin Luther King started to become a household name, a young black boy hitched a ride and found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, all the while just trying to get to college. Having done nothing wrong, and just for the fact that he was black, Elwood was arrested and ended up being sent to the juvenile reformatory Nickel Academy.

Nickel Academy, where young boys were sent, and some never returned. With the White House and Black Beauty hanging over them, they became slaves to "The Man', whether they were Caucasian or Negro. There were only 5 ways out - age out, have the court intervene, have family remove you, accumulate the needed amount of merits, or disappear. Often boys disappeared at the hands of the Academy - Elwood chose to run.

There were some twists in this story that surprised me. Although a fictional story I believe for the most part Whitehead tried to tell the story of the Dozier School for Boys, then as is so like him, he added his own touch in the way of these twists and turns. Proving that is one of the reasons that Whitehead books are so worth the read.

I was not a fan of The Underground Railroad, but wanted to give Whitehead another shot. I avoided reading the ARC because I wasn’t sure how I’d feel. I’m so glad I finally read it. This story as a whole was gut wrenching, but the story of friendship I such devastating circumstances was filled with hope. I think this one will stay with me for a long time.

It was an amazing experience to learn about the Florida School for Boys, a real-life place, through the eyes of two fictional black children written by the masterful hand of Colson Whitehead. I highly recommend this book to librarians, adults interested in history and social justice, and higher-level young adults.

I knew the young black boy was in trouble from the get-go; things were just going too well for him. My heart cried when Elwood was sent to Nickel's "school" due to the fact that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it was obvious there were many hard times ahead. And so there were, from sadistic people in charge to not enough food to eat. It is a sad, difficult story. Elwood is an idealist and clings to Dr. Martin Luther King's "Throw us in jail, and we will still love you." Turner, Elwood's friend, is a realist with survivor instincts. Things get messy; however, in spite of all that happens, there is a hopeful ending, of which I am most grateful. This is an excellent read inspired by a reform school in Florida I hope our society reaps good from it.