The Nickel Boys

This is one of those books that just wow you. Based on a true story, Whitehead tells us the story of a Elwood's experience in a Florida reform school in the 1960s. Segregated and violent, Nickel Academy marks every boy who passes through. As an adult, having made his way to New York City, he's created a good life for himself, but when the school is closed and archeologist's start discovering bodies of dead boys where they shouldn't be, he knows that it's time to confront his past.

It would be easy for this book to get weighed down with the brutality of the school and of the Jim Crow south in general, but Elwood's courage and dreams, and Whitehead's writing, lift the story above the mud. The writing is very plain, but descriptive, allowing the actions, thoughts, and feelings of the characters to speak for themselves, making them that much more resonant with the reader.

As I read this book, I kept wishing it was longer, if only because it was so good that the ending was bound to be disappointing. I can only say that I needn't have worried, as the ending was absolutely perfect. Kudos to Mr. Whitehead. This is a book that deserves to be read, and re-read, by everyone.

Being from Tallahassee and not far from Dozier School for Boys (the school which Nickel is based on) I was very intrigued by this book. While the story in the book is fiction, the fact that it is based on a real place that once ran hurts my soul. I think this is a book that everyone needs to read.

This is my first Whitehead book and my first time as a Floridian hearing about the Dozier School. I think Whitehead did a great job in setting the stage for the atrocities that occured at the school through the many characters portrayed. I like how he went into Curtis and Turner's backgrounds explaining how small coincidences and infraction could land a child in this "school".

The main thing I am undecided about is the ending. I wish there would have been a better conclusion to the story. Yes, it ends where it began but I don't feel like Curtis's story really had an ending. I wish we could have heard the grandmother's reaction to the news or that it could have inspired some real change. If the letter truly made it to Tallahassee, many should have seen the correlation between it and his death.

Then again this book is all about injustice... 111 years of it.