The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

A Novel

By: Colson Whitehead

Narrated by: JD Jackson, Colson Whitehead

Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • This follow-up to The Underground Railroad brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys unjustly sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. • "One of the most gifted novelists in America today." —NPR

When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood’s ideals and Turner’s skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.

Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers and “should further cement Whitehead as one of his generation's best" (Entertainment Weekly).

Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!

©2019 Colson Whitehead (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION • New York Times Bestseller • Longlisted for The National Book Award • Winner of The Kirkus Prize • Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction • One of Publishers Weekly's 10 Best Books of the Year

"A necessary read." —President Barack Obama

"This is a powerful book by one of America's great writers. . . . Without sentimentality, in as intense and finely crafted a book as you'll ever read, Whitehead tells a story of American history that won’t allow you to see the country in the same way again." —Toronto Star

"Colson Whitehead continues to make a classic American genre his own. . . . The narration is disciplined and the sentences plain and sturdy, oars cutting into water. Every chapter hits its marks. . . . Whitehead comports himself with gravity and care, the steward of painful, suppressed histories; his choices on the page can feel as much ethical as aesthetic. The ordinary language, the clear pane of his prose, lets the stories speak for themselves. . . . Whitehead has written novels of horror and apocalypse; nothing touches the grimness of the real stories he conveys here" —The New York Times

A treasure to listen to. The Author is brilliant

A treasure to listen to. The author wrote this book with details as if he was there.

Excellent story that has you drawn into the characters painful struggles.Amazing ending!!!

What a gifted writer. I was pulled into the story and could clearly visualize the “Nickel Academy “.

Great till it ended

Awesome story. Character, strength, resolve, trauma, abuse, classism, poverty, racism and a system and network that protects it all.

Fear Power

Power of fear can grip the strongest - using a fear to control others is an abused power but having the integrity to stand for beliefs/morals/what is right with yourself takes greater courage. Gives hope that the house doesn't win and that the game can be played on a fair field with fair rules by all.

Sad story

It was a good book to read....sad because some of it is based on a true story. However, surprise ending made it all worth it

Terrific -- and harrowing - story

This novel is based on the actual "reform" school in the south in the 1960s; boys sentenced to this hellhole for minor (or no) offenses, and follows the story of two boys in particular. The epilog is moving and essential.

Sobering

An important but sad and sobering story of many years of misdeeds perpetrated on young boys both black and white in an evil hypocritical "reform school" in Florida 50+ years ago. Shameful reminders of the dark side within us all. Surprisingly, it suggests that some/much of the horror was visited on white boys as well, and ends on a hopeful note, making this a bit different from other current accounts of racism in the late 20th century.

The book runs slowly at times, with a few confusing jumps, but overall I recommend it.

Heart Wrenching

Our book club selection for the month of June 2020, and the timing is eerie. I was driving between Montana and Colorado while listening and had to pull over several times to shake off my disbelief, tears and anger. This, along with Just Mercy and too many others, should be mandatory reading for every American. The system MUST change. #blacklivesmatter.

Spellbinding and heartbreaking story of our nation’s heritage of white supremacy

Whew. I just finished this, and I am shook up. The line about national guard troops coming in to rescue these kids from what can only be described as a concentration camp really hit me. We fought a war overseas and liberated people- but what was happening at home has been routinely glossed over and all but erased from our history.

This stuff goes deep, and I’m only now discovering how deep. My family is from Alabama- and I know some of the racism that I saw in my grandparents- but- I’m learning more now about how that racism was systematically built into our institutions. It has to be destroyed with the same systematic energy with which it was built.

This is an amazing, well told story. The narrator was perfect. Read it.

Great American Novel?

When I finished this I felt I had finished the great American novel, or at least one of them, a book that should be taught in standard high school English classes along side Twain, Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison. A gifted and idealistic young man does his best to persevere in a horrific youth prison in the Jim Crow south, inspired by Martin Luther King Jr and others. He is contrasted with his far more pragmatic friend. Who has it right? Masterfully, at the end you are not sure but you have learned a lot about yourself and America, but you still aren't sure.