The Nickel Boys was a fascinating fictionalization of a true American story. Colson Whitehead lets readers experience the horror of this boys school while focusing on the mindset of the main character who is coming to realize the depths of what he is experiencing. As Elwood gets less and less freedom, he begins to understand that he deserves so much more. The shocking reveal at the end was a heart-rending but realistic close to The Nickel Boys.

In his latest historical novel, Whitehead tells the story of a reform school set in the Deep South during the Jim Crow years. Elwood Curtis, a slightly quixotic African American boy with dreams of college and joining Dr. Martin Luther King’s work, is sentenced to Nickel for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There, he meets Jack Turner, a more practical-minded boy with dreams and plans of his own. Through these two well-wrought characters, Whitehead gives voice to many boys who were broken, beat-down, and even killed by a hateful, unjust system. But even as he chronicles unspeakable and atrocious acts, Whitehead also gives hope. There is hope in the power of human dreams, and their capacity to uplift not only the dreamers, but those around them.

Elwood Curtis, a bright young man on the verge of greater things in the Jim Crow South of the 1960s, gets swept up in a crime and is sentenced to a stint at Nickel Academy, a reform school. Although the school has a sterling reputation, the reality is darker, and Elwood must learn to navigate the violence, unwritten laws and tenuous relationships at the institution. Based on the true story of a reform school that damaged the lives of thousands in Florida, Nickel Boys is a powerful and relevant tale of resilience.

I was just blown away by “The Nickel Boys” by American treasure @ColsonWhitehead. Both its crushing depiction of an awful range of racist crimes and gratitude for his stellar, surprising storytelling. And its moments of sweetness. ❤️Elwood. Get it, read it.

The Nickel Boys tells the horrifying experiences of young “lost” boys living at a Juvenal school. Knowing these experiences were based on real people and a real place makes horrifying an understatement. Colin Whitehead is an author who brings truth to the past which I have never read in my school history books. Telling the perspective of young black boys during the Jim Crow era understandably justifies how these boys lives were altered and difficult in the current time. Reading this book has enlightened me to experiences of people beyond my world and my personal understanding of the past.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with this advanced copy.

Colson Whitehead has written another masterpiece. The Nickel Boys is a work of fiction, but it is based on a real school for boys in Florida. The Nickel School for Boys was meant to be a reform school for wayward boys. But it turned out to be a torture chamber for so many who were sent there. Elwood Curtis was an innocent victim of circumstances that sent him to Nickel. Elwood was a rabid reader, an intelligent young man with a bright future..He was filled with hope that justice would prevail and that he would quickly be released. But Elwood would learn of the unlimited bounds of cruelty of which some men are capable.

Wow! I can't stop thinking about this book. The characters haunt me, and no spoilers, but the ending was like a punch to the gut. Brilliant, heart-wrenching storytelling.

This is one of those books that just wow you. Based on a true story, Whitehead tells us the story of a Elwood's experience in a Florida reform school in the 1960s. Segregated and violent, Nickel Academy marks every boy who passes through. As an adult, having made his way to New York City, he's created a good life for himself, but when the school is closed and archeologist's start discovering bodies of dead boys where they shouldn't be, he knows that it's time to confront his past.

It would be easy for this book to get weighed down with the brutality of the school and of the Jim Crow south in general, but Elwood's courage and dreams, and Whitehead's writing, lift the story above the mud. The writing is very plain, but descriptive, allowing the actions, thoughts, and feelings of the characters to speak for themselves, making them that much more resonant with the reader.

As I read this book, I kept wishing it was longer, if only because it was so good that the ending was bound to be disappointing. I can only say that I needn't have worried, as the ending was absolutely perfect. Kudos to Mr. Whitehead. This is a book that deserves to be read, and re-read, by everyone.

Upsetting. Powerful. Another deeper dive into the United State's exploitative history from Colson Whitehead.

Obviously, I knew going into this that the subject was going to be a heavy-hitter, but I think I was still -somehow- caught off-guard by how devastating it was. The contrast between our main character, Elwood's, hope for the future -not just his future, but the future of African-Americans in general- and The Nickel Academy's disgusting brutality and bigotry was so upsetting. I went back and forth rooting for Elwood, being excited for all he could accomplish, and despairing over his circumstances, feeling sick to my stomach. Knowing that this book is fictionalized, but that this actually was a reality only 50 years ago is revolting. I hope everyone reads this, and I hope it angers them too.

Thank you so much to Doubleday and NetGalley for the eARC. This review will be posted to Goodreads, and to Amazon's and Barnes & Noble's websites.

Colson Whitehead is definitely one of the best writers of this generation. His stories and words are so compelling and it’s difficult to turn away from them. This book is no different. It squeezes at my heart.

An instant classic.

The writing is so smooth and plainspoken that it transports you to a different time and place, a place both familiar and completely alien. What is truly magical about the book is that it seems devoid of time, or more accurately of a time period. Although it mostly takes place in the past, the characters and scenes are so fresh and present that you feel part of the virtual landscape.

A coming of age story and a history lesson all rolled into one, the characters and their experiences are sure to stay with you for a long time to come.

Colson Whitehead continues his brilliance with this latest book. Set against the background of the civil rights movement, he reveals the horrors of a boys reform school in Florida. Based on the real Dozier school that operated until 2011. The words of Martin Luther King, Jr. whisper in your ear throughout the story bringing hope and heartbreak along the way.

“That’s what the school did to a boy. It didn’t stop once you got out. Bend you all kind of ways until you were unfit for straight life, good and twisted by the time you left.”

What a story! Colson Whitehead is a master storyteller. His ability to draw you into the story, catapult you back in time and captivate you with his characters is remarkable. The unspeakable things that were inflicted upon these boys was pure evil. I still need to process how this story unfolded.

Based on the Dozier School for Boys, this one was sad and horrible in that it depicted what more than likely went on in that reform school.

The ending broke my heart. I'm still trying to process what took me only a few hours to read because I wanted to know what would happen to the boys.

If you're looking for a fictional story based on true events, pick this one up. You'll fly through it!

Not bad, and individual sections are engaging. But ultimately this just makes you want to turn to some of the source material Whitehead recommends in the Acknowledgments at the end of the book, The Boys of the Dark by Robin Gaby Fisher in particular. The story of what happened at this FLA boys’ home deserves attention, but this book does not deserve the awards or acclaim that The Underground Railroad received.

Colson Whitehead is simply just brilliant! This is my second time reading a work of his and I was not disappointed. So much sadness within these pages but I felt like I walked away with closure after reading it.

Although a fiction novel, this story is inspired by the story of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. Colson’s story follows the main character Elwood from his time landing at The Nickel Academy to his final days spent there. It’s truly a heart wrenching story. Things you’d never wish upon any adult, nevertheless a child.

Really appreciated the acknowledgments at the end as well which gave me some more material to further research this story. A ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read from me. This is Colson’s 9th novel and I’m definitely going to be going back and reading some of his previous works. This book gave me chills and some things to really ponder on. Highly recommended.

People will be talking about this book. A report came out earlier this year about 27 more possible unmarked graves discovered on the grounds of the former Florida School for Boys near Tallahassee, Florida, a correctional facility where horrendous abuses were committed against mostly black boys. The Nickel Boys is a fictionalized account of two boys who go through a similar fictitious facility in the 60s called the Nickel Institute. The novel depicts horrors of the institute and the lasting effects those experiences have on the boys’ lives as they try to move on and forget. Because of the recentness of similar events, the story feels part journalism, part fiction, and part social justice commentary. It comes together to create a powerful story of how people get swept up into a system of abuse because of the color of their skin.

Heartbreaking. Certain to be a bookclub favorite and required reading for schools. The writing is clear, honest and bold. When bad luck lands a boy in a reform school that is not what it appears to be, he must nurture the dream in his heart if he is to survive. A hymn to friendship. Thank you Netgalley for an advance copy.

There are good books. There are great books. And then there are books that are … more.

Books that marry deft, propulsive prose with potent, stomach-punch emotions and meticulously-conceived characters. Books that tell remarkable stories while simultaneously transcending the stories being told. Books that take hold of your brains and your guts with equally ironclad grips, demanding your attention and imagination.

Books like Colson Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys.”

Whitehead has long been considered among the best of his writerly generation; his last offering – 2016’s “The Underground Railroad” – won the Pulitzer Prize, among many others. The staggering thing is this: he’s still getting better.

“The Nickel Boys” is Whitehead’s seventh book – and arguably his best yet. He eschews the genre flourishes with which his previous storytelling ventures have been peppered, instead committing to a straightforward realism that allows just the briefest glimmers of hopefulness against a nigh-unrelentingly bleak backdrop.

Elwood Curtis is a young black man living in segregated Tallahassee, Florida in the 1960s. He’s precocious; smart and hardworking and compassionate. He was abandoned by his parents, but he has grown up under the auspices of his grandmother’s loving ferocity. He is quietly inspired by the Civil Rights movement; the only record in the house is one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches, worn away by countless relistening.

His is a bright future – until being in the wrong place at the wrong time leads to his being sent to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reformatory whose admirable mission statement and public face hide the brutal truth. Behind the scenes, the Nickel Academy is a churning maelstrom of racism, sadism and opportunism, rife with physical and emotional abuse. The only way to get out is to keep your head down and get along.

Elwood’s struggles are lightened somewhat by Turner, a Nickel returnee whose understanding of the way things work is breathtakingly cynical … and largely accurate. The two boys become friends, each helping the other deal with the daily horrors that come with being beholden to a corrupt system that actively loathes everything about them.

Interspersed throughout, there are interludes of an older Elwood, reflecting on how the dark damages inflicted upon him and others by the Nickel Academy have followed him into adulthood, a constant shadowy companion that he has never and will never shake. And when news comes out about a particularly horrifying discovery on the grounds of the now-closed school, Elwood finds himself diving deeper into that past than he has in years … and there are still secrets yet to be revealed.

“The Nickel Boys” is one of the most emotionally fraught books I’ve read since … well, maybe ever. There’s a deeply unsettling verisimilitude to the Nickel Academy – no wonder, since Whitehead drew inspiration from a real place (The Dozier School for Boys, a Florida reformatory with a dark history of pain). By mining that reality, the book evokes a sense of truth that makes the events contained therein hit all the harder.

So much of Whitehead’s work involves race and how race impacts the American experience. Those themes are explored again in “The Nickel Boys,” albeit more directly than in past offerings. That directness lends even more heft to the already-meaty discourse he drives; it’s the sort of generational work that lands an author an honored place in the literary pantheon, though one could make the argument that Whitehead is a standard bearer for his generation of black writers and hence already has a spot. Still, after this one, he’s probably going to need to be moved up this list.

The slim volume comes in at just 224 pages, yet still overflows with furious poetry and intellectual rawness. It unspools with pacing that feels breakneck while also managing to elicit a sense of stasis; the whole thing practically drips with the frustrations of the societal status quo, even as we move back and forth through the years.

Words like “haunting” get tossed around a lot by critics – it serves as a handy shorthand term, even if it isn’t always totally accurate. In the case of “The Nickel Boys,” however, it could not be more apt. The injustices done to Elwood and Turner and their respective efforts to resist and rise against … those shadows linger. This story IS haunting, in more ways than one.

And of course, we have to recognize the narrative brilliance that Whitehead brings to the table. There’s a stunning vividity to his language; perhaps more than any other American writer, he has the ability to let the reader see through his eyes and hear through his ears. His is a finely-crafted and exquisitely-detailed vision – and thanks to his particular and considerable skills, we can experience it as fully realized.

It has been some time since a book inspired such strong reactions in me. We’re talking literal out-loud gasps; whether they were brought on by a particularly powerful phrase or a beautifully executed narrative turn, their impacts on me were audible.

Thought-provoking, powerful and shatteringly sad, “The Nickel Boys” is easily the best book of 2019 thus far … and it’s awfully tough to think that any other work will surpass it. It is a masterpiece, executed flawlessly by one of our most gifted writers. A worthwhile and magnificent addition to the 21st century canon … and the best yet in a career already rife with excellence.

There are good books. There are great books. And then there are books that are … more.

“The Nickel Boys” is more.

Published by Doubleday on July 16, 2019

The Nickel Boys is set in the 1960s, while Jim Crow was still the rule in the South. Blacks are jailed because of their skin color. They die in jail because of their skin color. They are beaten for wearing a military uniform because of their skin color. They are denied educational opportunities because of their skin color. They get sent to reform school for the offense of homelessness because of their skin color. An atmosphere of fear and injustice permeates the novel.

The story follows Elwood Curtis, who begins the novel as a dishwasher in Tallahassee. Elwood istens to recordings of speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and looks forward to the day when Dr. Kinng's dream of equal opportunity will come true. In high school, Elwood moves on to a job in a tobacco shop, hoping to save money for college. Dr. King’s admonition that “we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity” inform the life Elwood is trying to achieve.

Elwood lives with his grandmother, who fears the civil rights movement as much as she appreciates its achievements, including being able to sit wherever she wants on the bus. When Elwood marches with college students to protest a theater that won’t serve black customers, his grandmother worries that he is putting his life at risk. She is “a survivor but the world took her in bites.”

Elwood enrolls in a junior college and seems be walking the streets with a sense of dignity when he hitches a ride with a man who is driving a stolen car. That misfortune sets the scene for the heart of the novel.

Elwood is sent to Nickel Reform School. A prelude, set in the present, explains that archeology students have interred bodies in the Nickel Reform School cemetery that show clear evidence of abuse. Even more troubling are the bodies buried on school property, outside of the cemetery, the unacknowledged dead. The prelude foreshadows a difficult time for Elwood as a Nickel boy.

In his acknowledgements, Colson Whitehead tells the reader that Nickel Reform School is inspired by the story of Florida’s Dozier School for Boys. Whitehead’s fictional account of the Nickel Reform School echoes the horrific reality of Dozier, including the investigation of grave sites.

Like Dozier, the fictional Nickel Reform School separates black and white inmates. Its purpose is to instill docility and obedience. Elwood learns that standing up for the weak against the bullies is likely to lead to a beating by the bullies and another by the staff. Such are the moral values instilled by reform schools.

The novel explains the fate of a boy whose body is disinterred fifty years later. His story is still told by rings screwed into trees in the woods, rings to which boys were shackled before being whipped: “Testifying to anyone who cares to listen.”

Inspired by the teachings of Dr. King and the actions of Rosa Parks, Elwood wants to do his part to encourage nonviolent reform of the evils he sees at Nickel. Will he have the courage? The novel suggests that the unlikeliest people, when oppressed, can find courage. Even fruitless efforts can inspire the kind of dignity that Dr. King deemed essential to the human spirit.

The Nickle Boys is not a feel-good fantasy about a young man who overcomes adversity, although it does acknowledge the possibility of defeating internalized demons. Places like Nickel ­— described as one of hundreds “scattered across the land like pain factories” — existed to break an inmate’s spirt. Opportunities lost might never be regained. With perseverance and luck, an intelligent person can build a life, even achieve a semblance of success, but that life will be shackled to the past. Survivors of institutions are “denied even the simple pleasure of being ordinary.”

This is a short novel, all the fat trimmed away to tell a compact but far-reaching story. The ending comes as a complete surprise. It is a fitting resolution to a captivating novel. Like The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys illustrates Colson Whitehead’s ability to personalize the history of injustice. The story is gut-wrenching and emotionally charged. The Nickel Boys reminds readers of how far the nation has come and how much farther it must go to honor its promise of equal justice under the law.

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