The Nickel Boys

By Colson Whitehead Fleet, £16.99 Review by Derek Watson

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad has delivered another searing indictment of injustice and suffering.

Set in the Jim Crow era after slavery has been abolished,

‘students’ are cast into the murderous, cruel Nickel reform school in Florida.

You’ll burn with anger as A-student Elwood, guilty of nothing more than naivety and a stubborn idealism, inspired by a worn-out recording of a Martin Luther King speech, finds the door slammed shut on his dream of a better life.

As he is taken under the wing of the more cynical Turner, he discovers there is no promised land, just the realisation

that the only escape is likely to be a one-way trip to a punishment beating.

In the end, Elwood is forced to take a stand to try and right terrible wrongs.

The powerful prose of Whitehead (below) is a cool study of an era which still shakes the foundations of the US today as the voices of those who survived similar treatment in orphanages, church or state-run workhouses are finally heard. There are some memorable moments, including a boxing match which fails to deliver a knockout to white supremacy.

However, as the tale was inspired by shocking events at a real reform school, sometimes the truth suffocates the story and there are over-familiar tropes.

It’s harder to walk in someone’s shoes when some of the journey is a struggle over familiar ground.

Not quite the must-read of The Underground Railroad, but close enough for fans old and new.