Reviews with content warning for Racism - Τα αγόρια του Νίκελ

Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Τα αγόρια του Νίκελ by Colson Whitehead, Μυρσίνη Γκανά

297 reviews

reputzy's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

This is the most moving book I’d read in ages. Incredibly written, approachable but incredibly dark.
I think everyone in America should read this and take these lessons with them

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dion_reads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

waffel113's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

If he had been less tired he might have recognized the name from a story he heard once when he was young, about a boy who liked to read adventure stories in the kitchen, but it eluded him. He was hungry and they served all day, and that was enough.

In 2022 I took a flyer on Colson Whitehead's then-most recent novel, Harlem Shuffle and was instantly won over by his prose and unshaking command of character and place. That was a crime novel set in 1960s Harlem, focusing on a striver who gets wrapped up in the underworld and grapples with the repercussions of his crime-aided climb up the ladder and having wicked fun with the genre's conventions. By sharp contrast, 2019's The Nickel Boys - Whitehead's second Pulitzer Prize winner, soon to be released as a major motion picture - is a stark, primal howl into the void that is the legacy of American racism. Based on the true story of the Dozier Academy for Boys, the novel is a confirmation of Whitehead as one of our greatest, most vital living authors, a prodigious talent no matter the environs he situates himself in.

In the 2010s, Elwood Curtis is a successful business owner in New York City who finds himself confronted with his past when archaeology students in Florida unearth a hidden cemetery with dozens of unidentified bodies on the grounds of Nickel Academy, an infamous reformatory school in Florida, and finds himself compelled to confront his past. In the 1960s, Elwood was sent there after hitching a ride to college with a man who had stolen a car, and the bulk of the story details his life in Nickel, trying to retain his dignity in the face of the injustice inflicted on him in the example of Dr. Martin Luther King. There, he meets another young man named Curtis who challenges his principles; to Curtis, a second-time inmate of the Academy, Elwood is worse than naive. It's the friendship and tension that develops between the two that drives the book towards a shocking climax that reframes everything we thought we knew beforehand.

The thing that's going to haunt me the most about this book, I think, is how pervasive the aura of sheer dread that Whitehead conjures is. You know that horrible things are going to befall Elwood as soon as his ride is pulled over, and he spares very few details once he's inside the Academy's walls. And what makes it all the worse is that Whitehead didn't invent a thing: every single horror he depicts in the novel is torn straight from the history books, from the White House on down. There was one chapter that unsettled me so thoroughly I had to set the book aside until today, where I finished it all in one go on my flight to Dallas. The cumulative effect of this is twofold: the cruelties that are inflicted on Elwood are compounded and amplified by the knowledge that, while Whitehead's plot is an invention, all of this really happened to countless young boys in the not-too-distant past. I don't mean to be flippant, but especially after the events of this past Tuesday, a book like The Nickel Boys, on top of being a brilliant work of fiction, is a visceral reminder of how deeply racism is woven into the fabric of American life. The proof of that is just beneath our feet, but novels like these give the dead a voice. We would do well to listen.

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lachellerising's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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karyzi's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

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marie's review against another edition

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informative relaxing sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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mollyb13's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Picked this book up a couple years ago and had a hard time getting into it. Decided to give it another go since a film adaptation is coming out and it is The Stacks Book Club pick this month. And boy, am I glad that I was pushed to try reading this again. This book is worth every bit of the Pulitzer Prize that it won.

Absolutely haunting and maddening. Colson Whitehead really packs a punch in well under 300 pages. I will be processing this story and the ending for quite a while.

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nadia's review against another edition

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dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.25

This, my first Whitehead, is a really good book, covering harrowing subject matter. I'm not sure the narration style was my favourite though. While it started strong, I ended up finding it a little dull at times, and I often had to reread sentences/paragraphs, thinking I'd missed something. Overall, the writing quality was great and towards the end of the book the pace picked up and I was swiftly turning those pages!

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mr_e_staley's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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jaaay_reads's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

This was a good book. It has many topics that can be hard for some to read so definitely look up content warnings.

I think Elwood is a character that in this story is actually served by not really having a character arc. It was his sturdiness in all that was happening that was really admirable.

Maybe it was because I was listening to an audiobook, but my only real critique was that there were times when we changed scenes, and it was a different character or plotline being talked about, and it took me a moment to understand what was happening. Nothing terrible, but I wish there had been some smoother transitions between the changes in perspective.

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