Reviews for The Nickel boys : a novel

Library Journal
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Elwood Curtis is a good kid. He works hard and is kind, even when his contemporaries make fun of him for it. Abandoned by his parents at a young age and raised by his grandmother, he is a quiet teen living in the segregated south, dreaming of going to college and participating heroically in Martin Luther King Jr's nonviolent protests. When Elwood hitchhikes to get to an early entrance college class, he has no idea that the car was stolen, the driver a criminal. Elwood is immediately thrown into the Nickel Academy, a reform school for boys. Subjected to brutal abuse, both mental and physical, the boys must do everything they can not to be "taken out back"; a place from which they may never return. The novel follows several boys as they try to survive in a literal Hell on Earth. Based on a real reform school that operated in Florida for over 100 years, this deeply harrowing novel is extremely timely. Whitehead adeptly weaves into and out of each boy's life at Nickel as well as Curtis's adulthood after his escape. The scars on Curtis's psyche are subtle but deep and recognizable. JD Jackson narrates with accomplished ease. VERDICT This novel will pull you in and keep you thinking long after you stop listening. Recommended to fans of A Lesson before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines.—Terry Ann Lawler, Burton Barr Lib., Phoenix

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