Those who read Colson Whitehead's 2016 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning novel The Underground Railroad may expect, as I did, that this newest book would have a similar style and tone. Wrong. The Underground Railroad is a journey into the realm of magic realism, with a narrative rooted in metaphor. The Nickel Boys is ultra realistic, and is, in fact, based on a real situation and place, a juvenile reform school in Florida on which were discovered numerous bodies of young boys who had evidently been murdered and then listed in the records as run-aways. This is a fictionalized version of events which might have taken place at the school.
Elwood Curtis is a black high school student during the time of the beginning of the civil rights movement. He is inspired by the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to consider himself "as good as anyone." Determined to make something of himself, he excels in school and follows a personal code of working hard and behaving right. But then he runs afoul of the law by just being in the wrong place at the wrong time and is sent to the Nickel Academy. What follows is a litany of abuses at the hands of the guards and teacher, including savage beatings, rapes, and even murders. Through it all Elwood tries to keep his positive attitude that the right will eventually prevail, while his new best friend and fellow inmate Turner maintains that the world is crooked and the only way to get ahead is to scheme to outsmart the other guy.
Books that feature a plot twist quite often seem too-clever and manipulative, but Whitehead's surprising ending resolves the philosophical conflict epitomized by the two boys and provides a satisfying ending to the story.
I highly recommend this novel.
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