In Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead takes readers on a sharp turn away from his guttural Pulitzer winning novels (The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys) to 1960's Harlem heists, crooked dealings, shakedowns and payoffs. We meet Ray Carney, a somewhat "bent" businessman trying to stay straight and not follow the crooked path of his father and cousin, both known for running jobs and falling into trouble. With a young family and sucessful furniture shop, Carney struggles to keep his dealings legit when it's just so easy to get a little crooked. Things get interesting when he realizes he may have been pulled in too far to his cousin's dangerous games and finds he's got some scores of his own to settle.

While I didn't enjoy this slow-burn crime story nearly as much as his Pulitzer winning works, I was still entertained. His writing style and story-telling are incredible, My biggest complaint would be that much of the action happened in bursts and the in-between times dragged quite a bit. I wish it was more fast paced, less character driven, more action. Overall, very cool story, especially for readers who love a solid heist story. It never quite exploded for me like I hoped it would, hence 3 star rating.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read in exchange for my honest review.

Wow. What a story. This is the perfect crime/con-artist story, and Colson Whitehead truly never fails to craft brilliant, dimensional characters who, through their experiences, highlight history and social issues. I felt immediately invested in Carney and Freddie and the other supporting characters, and saw so much of the depth and nuance in their character arcs. Whitehead really forces the reader to acknowledge and sit with the reality that there really is no such thing as “good” or “bad” people. There are mostly people who live in the gray area, and Whitehead allows us to see the forces that lead people to make certain decisions and choices that we might not always understand. Harlem Shuffle is a book that will definitely stay with me and that I’d like to read again to really absorb more of Whitehead’s detailed prose and nuanced characters. Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for this advance e-arc!

I thoroughly enjoyed this story as a historical fiction fan, but ultimately as a fan of con-artist stories.
It never fails that those who walk the line between straight and crooked - "bent" as Ray Carney likes to say - get pulled back in at some point.
Coming from a family of criminals Ray chose to go straight, making a name for himself swerving the furniture and household needs of the residents of Harlem. Well, as straight as he can. What's wrong with providing an avenue for a friend to offload the occasional television or ring?
But it's hard to keep your balance walking a line that fine, especially with family still in the con business. Ray's cousin gets Ray in deep with some bad guys and it's up to Ray to try to get them both out of it.
I love the writing. A lot of it is Ray's thoughts, exactly as they ho through his head.
Whitehead has obviously done the research and paints a great picture of a monumentoys time period in Harlem.
A thoroughly enjoyable read.

I love this book, no I hate this book. Ok I love this book. Well the long and short of it is that I did enjoy the book and became invested in the characters and what happened to them. But I didn't understand a good bit of it. I didn't understand a lot of the terminology in most of the book. I chose this book to try to expand my genre of book reading. So while I enjoyed the book, it may have been too early in my exposure to this kind of literature for me to fully benefit from all of the nuances of the story.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Colson Whitehead shifts his gears from his most popular Underground Railroad and writes a love letter to Harlem. The setting is during the late 50’s to the early 60’s just as the Black Power movement began. Ray Carney sets out to be a respectable man, a business owner, a family man aiming to move his family to a better place. As the owner of a furniture store on Harlem’s “main street” 125th Street, he’s got the knowledge of the finest pieces of furniture in the world, but that doesn’t matter much to the diverse cast of characters he encounters. His father left him with a crooked reputation that Carney tries to shake, but it’s in his blood.

Carney’s cousin and closest friend, Freddie was always up to something. When he approaches Carney about a potential heist, he’s not interested. The thing about Ray Carney is that he “… only slightly bent when it came to being crooked”. Problems arise when Freddie has already put his name in the caper and the thugs involved give him no way out. From this point on in the book we see pieces of Harlem history and crooked life where fine lines are drawn between black and white, rich and poor, strivers and survivors. Carney and Freddie reveal a piece of each of these fine lines.

One of the things that rang true for me in this story is that the things we discuss about racism and colorism today are the same conversations held during those Harlem days referred to in this book. Carney wanted better for himself and his family, but the players and situations in the story never let him forget where he came from. In the end, Whitehead does what he does best, he leaves you with a whole lot to ponder and discuss days after you have read the final page.

Critics are loving this historical fiction book set in 1960's Harlem and billed as a caper novel.
I wish I had loved it as much as the hype.

Carney is a furniture salesman who tries to keep his head down. He gets involved in some capers in 1960's Harlem, somewhat against his will. If you want atmosphere, this book is for you. You will definitely be transported back in time. If you want an action book, this is not it. There were about 40 pages of action in this whole book. There were dozens of minor characters and I never really felt like I got a true sense of the main character's thoughts and motivations. This reminded me a lot of Deacon King Kong but with less character development.

If you want a good action book, read Razorblade Tears instead. If you want a slow moving book with a glimpse into a time in Harlem, this book might be for you.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy for review.

Have you ever an author was talented and important, but still couldn’t seem to connect to their writing?

This is my relationship with Colson Whitehead. This is my second book by him, the first being “The Nickel Boys”. While I find the premises of his book to be intriguing and his voice and representation necessary to connect readers to experiences outside of their own, his delivery and my taste just don’t mesh.

I’m looking forward to seeing all of your reviews on this book- your interpretations and opinions will give me added insight, as they always do!

Published by Doubleday on September 14, 2021

Harlem Shuffle is set in the 1950s and 60s. Raymond Carney owns a furniture store in Harlem. Carney’s father was disreputable. Carney raised himself after his mother died. He has a business degree from Queens College, a wife and kids, and dreams. He longs to move to a larger apartment in a nicer building, a dream he entertains as he walks the streets of Harlem, inspecting the buildings that he passes and imaging life inside their walls, a dream he defers whenever his savings shrink.

The Harlem atmosphere is as important to the novel as the plot. Harlem is changing. The World’s Fair promises a better future, but upward mobility for some results in misfortune for others. Through the course of the novel, Carney sees buildings that offer affordable housing torn down by developers while landmark businesses close. Some blame rioters for businesses that were destined to fail anyway, leading Carney to ask: “How long do you keep trying to save something that has been lost?” Carney keeps his business open, knowing the protests will pass and that protests won’t stop white cops from killing Harlem residents. The parallel between Harlem protests against police violence and similar BLM protests in recent years illustrates Colson Whitehead’s point: everything changes — “the textile warehouses and women’s hat stores and shoeshine stands, the greasy spoons” are reduced to rubble to make way for the World Trade Center — but nothing really changes, including police violence.

The plot follows several years in Carney’s life, years marked by upward mobility that is only partially attributable to his success selling high quality furniture, often on credit, some of which has been “gently used.” It’s not an easy business and Carney worries that his wife would leave him if she learned how he supplements his income.

Carney and his cousin Freddy ran together when they were young. Carney got his life together but Freddy’s life was “a haze of lost seasons” filled with aimless loafing, burglaries, running numbers, and a stretch of jail time. On occasion, Carney fences goods that Freddy steals, although Carney doesn’t ask whether they are stolen so he can imagine himself to be honest. And for the most part, he is. No worse, at least, than the cops to whom he pays protection money or the city workers he bribes for permits.

Freddy’s life takes another wrong turn when he joins a plan to rob the Hotel Theresa, a decision that brings “guns and hard men” into his life. Freddy proposes Carney as a fence for jewelry recovered from the hotel’s safe deposit boxes, but Carney refuses. Unfortunately for Carney, Freddy gets him involved anyway, connecting Carney to a hard man who becomes a source of grief while promoting Carney’s career as a middleman between jewelry thieves and a white midtown jeweler who gives Carney a fair deal on the stolen goods.

The story travels through peaks and valleys. Two peaks involve threats or acts of violence directed toward Carney or Freddy. Carney is not a violent man but he knows where to find a violent man when he needs help. Another peak involves a banker who took money from Carney in exchange for a favor the banker didn’t deliver. Carney executes a plan with several moving parts to take revenge against the banker.

Favors are the grease that lubricates all business in New York. Envelopes of cash assure that the police don’t bother Carney or buy their assistance when he needs to set his plan in motion. A cop talks about “a circulation, a movement of envelopes that keep the city running.” Carney later contemplates the chain of events that depend on an exchange of envelopes. “Disrespect the order and the whole system breaks down.”

After reading two Pulitzer Prize winners from Whitehead, I was surprised to read something that almost falls within the genre of crime fiction. But the “almost” is important. Harlem Shuffle reminded me of The 25th Hour, in that crime is the context that drives a deeper story. Harlem Shuffle is the story of a man divided, a man who (like many others, as he is surprised to learn) preserves an illusion of honesty while knowing that’s he a criminal, a man who struggles to draw a shifting line between crimes he is willing to commit — crimes that are no worse than those committed by a wealthy white family that drive the novel’s last act — and crimes that are far removed from his nature. The themes of change and personal struggle and the Harlem atmosphere transform a fairly ordinary crime story into something special.

RECOMMENDED

When you have the opportunity to read something by a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author, you take it. Having previously read Colson Whitehead’s powerful novel, The Nickel Boys, I was excited about this one. Maybe I had unfair expectations, but this just did not measure up for me.

In an escape from the heaviness of his previous novels, Harlem Shuffle takes us to Harlem during the immense change of the 1950s and 1960s. Our protagonist, Ray Carney, grew up with a crook as a dad and is looking to live a life that’s “only slightly bent”. He has a family and owns a furniture store that appears to be doing well. His closeness with his cousin, Freddie, gets him involved in the less upstanding business of New York City crime bosses. Ray attempts to walk the line between the two worlds, while protecting both his wife and kids and his cousin. This novel takes us through his journey of attempting to balance it all.

Whitehead proves once again that he is a master of character development, as you truly feel you get to know many of the characters in this book. He also manages to transport the reader to Harlem with his vivid descriptions of both time and place. With that said, the first half of the book was pretty hard for me to get into. I can’t blame Whitehead for wanting a change of pace, but for readers of his previous works, I’m not sure this one rises to meet our (very high) expectations. Thanks to Doubleday Books and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC.

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead is sure to be a bestseller. This tale is set in Harlem in the 1960s and features Ray. It's an entertaining family drama with secrets to reveal. The setting is so well described by the author. It's like going for a field trip but never leaving your house as you jump into Harlem and watch Ray struggle between the two sides of his world. Read and enjoy!

Harlem Shuffle is another brilliant book by Colson Whitehead. It’s definitely lengthy and took me a little while to get into, but the writing is flawless and so engaging. This is sure to be another hit!

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday for the opportunity to read this book for an honest review.

Ray Carney has his feet planted in two different worlds. By day, he is a respected business owner of a furniture store. After hours, he takes in electronics and other ill-gotten gains for which he acts as a fence. Carney is only trying to make a better life for his family, as he finds ways to make ends meet so that he and his wife and child can someday move into a better apartment on a better street to live a better life. Carney is aware that his successful in-laws think he was the wrong choice for their daughter and it is this knowledge, along with his sense of family responsibility, that drives much of what he does. When his cousin, Freddie, offers up Carney's services after being involved in a hotel heist, Carney (who has no idea why he is being contacted) becomes more deeply involved in that other world than he ever intended. With Freddie's repeated words, "I didn't mean to get you in trouble," the reader begins to understand both Freddie's and Ray's motivation for doing what they do.

Colson Whitehead has written a mesmerizing tale that draws the reader in from the start. Transporting the reader to Harlem in the early 1960's, the author's descriptive language creates images so vivid that the reader can, literally, imagine him/herself in Harlem as a first hand witness to the recorded events. This book is a fantastic read with lots of discussion topics for book clubs to delve into. Highly recommend Harlem Shuffle.

Thank you to Doubleday Books and NetGalley for this electronic ARC. #HarlemShuffle #NetGalley

Maybe I'm just in a dour state, but I loved "The Nickel Boys" and "The Underground Railroad" for both their dark truths and the compelling narrative. I enjoyed "Harlem Shuffle," just didn't love it. The characters are fascinating, and the novel starts out as a fast-paced heist, full of funny scenes and hysterical writing.

But then, we leave 1959 and move to 1961, and we get a bit of a different glimpse into Harlem, a city Whitehead appears to love. The first heist is over, sadly, and our main character, Carney, becomes both a more family-oriented man, and a more angry man. Life becomes a world of addictions, overdose, police brutality, violent crimes, and despair.

Fortunately, the pace and writing picks up in the third section, 1964, and Carney is once again involved in another crime, more heisty humor surfaces, and readers are on another jovial jaunt with these wild characters.

Well written and vividly depicted heist story set in Harlem in the 60s. We get into the head and life of Ray who thinks he’s a pretty good guy that occasionally dabbles in the more sketchy side of the sale of used items. It’s a if he has a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other and
Ray is caught in the middle. He’s a proud business owner and family man trying to provide for his family and rise above the crooked ways of his father and cousin. I enjoyed the story.

Family drama saga with the heist crimes as a backdrop.
I think I had expected something different and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I thought it would be a tale of a portentous buildup to a singular metamorphic crime. It was more of a tale of the struggle to choose which identity path to follow and the difficulty of changing momentum, especially when so many exterior forces seem to determine a set trajectory.

Ray Carney is a furniture salesman whose cousin Freddy just can't help but pull him into the fallout of his poorly planned or executed capers. This turns Ray into the middleman for a shady part of what I imagine is the "Shuffle" of illegitimately acquired goods into legitimately purchased ones. Ray is pressured not just by his cousin, but also indirectly by his in-laws and their ill-hidden disappointment in their daughter's life decisions which include Ray, and the deeper specter of his late father who was well established in his crooked trades.

The writing of this novel was exactly what I would expect from Colson Whitehead. It was gorgeous. There are too many quality lines of note to add to a review, too many that I laughed with, too many that made me really stop and ponder the depth of thought. This is what made the book for me. I will always read Whitehead for his writing, whatever he writes about. He doesn't dumb anything down and uses words and phrases I rarely see in current popular novels which adds a richer dimension to his stories.

While I wasn't as captivated by the story like I have been in his other novels, this was a good read and I am so thankful for NetGalley for providing me an ARC. My opinions are entirely my own, and if you like a slightly deeper than usual crime drama, this should be on your list. I mixed my reading with the audio at times, and that was a fun changeup.

Another amazing book from Colson Whitehead!! While the subject matter is definitely heavy, it's so beautifully written that it's not a chore to read. Absolutely recommend!

I had to DNF this one at about the halfway mark.

As much as I hate not finishing books, I could't justify spending any longer on this one. For a relatively decent sized novel, the task of reading it shouldn't have felt Herculean. The jams Ray Carney kept running into were so cyclical and wordy, I found my eyes jumping off the page after just paragraphs at a time. <u>Nickel Boys</u> and <u>Underground Railroad</u> both had so much more substance to them, as well as characters I was attached to and genuinely cared about. But I felt more of a connection to Ray's wife and children than I ever did Ray himself and I just couldn't keep reading these roundabout stories about this thief and that crook and this jeweler connection and that furniture store mogul or what have you. I know it would take me at least another 5 days to get through the second half of this book and I just can't do it.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes lengthy, drawn out descriptions of heists gone wrong, filled with a seemingly never ending amount of characters. (Maybe fans of The Departed, a film I didn't enjoy.) But this doesn't really compare to Whitehead's other novels for me.

This book really makes you feel like you’re experiencing the ups and downs of New York City - it brings everything front and center, with no frills or bells. As Ray changed, so did New York City; the ways in which family and identity intertwined with crime and corruption are so intertwined, you cannot find where it ends and where it begins. I really empathized with Ray’s motivations - family, always family. Race and power are themes throughout the story, and demonstrates how power corrupts all who come into contact with it. This story illustrates it well, and I really appreciated this advance copy - this is a book I would want to get from the library and read again.

As usual, Colson Whitehead has another top read with "Harlem Shuffle." This bestselling author is known for his ability to reach down and grab the soul, and this time he focused his writing genius on 1959 Harlem. Ray Carney is a family man, a black businessman and a shadowy character trying to be good. Written as a "love story to Harlem," Carney is only one of many colorful characters who live, thrive and die on Harlem streets. Yes, there's violence, but Whitehead deals with it as one of the many paths leading to and from 125th Street. Sprinkled throughout are references to those places that most people will recognize - the Apollo Theatre, the descriptions of the posters of the time, the rhythm of the city and the people. "Harlem Shuffle" is a heartfelt take on the era that seems born of a sentimental fondness for these bygone days.

Harlem shuffle is a lively, kind of gritty, definitely entertaining read. I feel like the "crime-fic" parts of the book took a backseat to the culture/period parts, and I almost with there were a bit more of "heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs" promised in the premise. Regardless, Ray Carney was certainly an interesting character to follow. I enjoyed the Harlem setting, loved the writing overall, and will likely read anything Whitehead publishes. The last chapter felt especially poignant, and I found myself re-reading it to fully grasp the significance. Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday for an ARC.