The Nickel Boys

I reached the climax of Colson Whitehead's 2018 novel The Nickel Boys with the heaviest of hearts.  It had the sort of awful surprise that made me immediately anxious to re-read the previous two hundred pages, armed with knowledge of the outcome that would make the story that much more gut wrenching.  It did not feel gimmicky or contrived, but rather an exclamation point on the pursuit of activism, a seeking of basic justice and the recognizance of tolerance.  A fight that still rages and may well never cease.

Sensitive souls like Elwood Curtis often chewed up by the System, though he has an unfailing spirit of humanity that informs and drives his steadfastness and longsuffering.  We follow the young, bright African-American from his high school days in early '60s Tallahassee.  The product of a broken home, though always motivated to learn as much as he can and exhibiting the best of behavior.   But he's not a get along/go along sort, especially in the age of racial segregation.  He will join Civil Rights marches and be inspired by his frequent auditions of the speeches of MLK he has on records.  Poised to become that rare sort of person who institutes positive change, always with a spirit of integrity. 

One fateful day on the way to take classes at a University, Elwood accepts a ride from a guy who just stole that car, and is charged as a delinquent.  His fate perhaps sealed.   He will be sentenced to Nickel Academy, a reform school in Eleanor, FL.  A place with terrible secrets and history, evidenced by the excavation of graves described in present day in The Nickel Boy's opening pages.   Just how terrible will be described by Whitehead in page turning fashion, but the joy of a brisk pace is always tempered with a weight, the knowledge that this story really happened.  That Nickel is based on a real place called the Dozier School, one discovered to be the site of regular beatings and even some murders of its students.

The dense style of Whitehead's The Intuitionist is nowhere in evidence in this novel.  Rather, the author takes a far more readable approach, more immediate and involving.   But never less than trenchant and indicting.  This is no potboiler, and the sketches of the South in the 1960s seems plausible and free of easy caricature.  The flashback and flash forward structure among chapters packs the intended punch, leading up to the denouement that just about took my breath.   So many thoughts, even on to the falling action.  The guilt of survival.  The honoring of a kindred spirit.  The celebration of this novel is well earned.