What readers think of The Nickel Boys, plus links to write your own review.

This book made me weep. This book made me angry. This book made me frustrated. This book broke my heart. This book is also a literary masterpiece with a formidable and vital story to tell.

Expertly written by Colson Whitehead, this is the story of Elwood Curtis, a black teenager living in Tallahassee, Florida in the early 1960s. His parents deserted him years ago so he lives with his grandmother, who is raising this child right. He loves school, he takes his part-time job seriously, he wants to go to college, but sometimes he has no common sense—and that is what leads to trouble. When Elwood is sentenced to a reform school called the Nickel Academy for Boys for a crime he did not commit, his life changes in such violent, cruel, and sadistic ways that his soul is forever seared. How he survives this piece of hell on Earth is the crux of the novel with an astonishing plot twist at the end that left me physically shaking.

Elwood Curtis is a fictional character, but the Nickel Academy for Boys is solidly based on the very real Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. Whitehead honors its former students/inmates by telling this composite story. When such bloody, vicious, and deadly secrets are exposed to the light, one hopes they will never be allowed to happen again.

This book won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for a reason. With a gripping plot, bold and vibrant characters, and razor-sharp prose, the novel's underlying message is so unflinching, significant, and searing it will take your breath away.

Read it!

This book should be a part of every Florida high school history curriculum. Colson's writing informs the reader of the horrors of the "school" and the complicity of the nearby town's authorities and asks important questions about how the long term abuses were continued and condoned.

I’m starting to think Colson Whitehead is a god. The fact that he can write so well, on so many topics, and entertain and get a message across, it’s just a WOW for me. This is a pretty dark story and I’m sure some will not like it for that reason alone. Read it anyway, even if you start hearing about how depressing it is. It’s based in facts and unfortunately these things happened. Although Whitehead has of course written a fictional book, it’s close enough to the truth to make it important. He is a wonderful writer and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

Thanks to Netgalley and Doubleday books for a chance to read and review this ARC. Published Jul 16, 2019.

Another winner by Whitehead. Having read Underground Railroad I was excited to see this book. Although feeling that this book was somewhat milder than Underground Railroad, I did enjoy the twists and turns that this book provided.

Whitehead based this fictional book on the true to life experiences of boys incarcerated at the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna Florida. In his acknowledgements he gives a number of other books and articles he used as reference for this book.

In the early 60's just as Martin Luther King started to become a household name, a young black boy hitched a ride and found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, all the while just trying to get to college. Having done nothing wrong, and just for the fact that he was black, Elwood was arrested and ended up being sent to the juvenile reformatory Nickel Academy.

Nickel Academy, where young boys were sent, and some never returned. With the White House and Black Beauty hanging over them, they became slaves to "The Man', whether they were Caucasian or Negro. There were only 5 ways out - age out, have the court intervene, have family remove you, accumulate the needed amount of merits, or disappear. Often boys disappeared at the hands of the Academy - Elwood chose to run.

There were some twists in this story that surprised me. Although a fictional story I believe for the most part Whitehead tried to tell the story of the Dozier School for Boys, then as is so like him, he added his own touch in the way of these twists and turns. Proving that is one of the reasons that Whitehead books are so worth the read.

I was hoping for a bit more true history - but this is a great book for young adults.