This a beautiful, strange, unflinching, mysterious little book. The lead character is Lila Mae Watson, the first black woman to ever earn the badge of Elevator Inspector in a city obsessed with verticality. The Department of Elevator Inspectors is a sprawling institution, with an attached university to train its members and associations with the city government, major manufacturers, and the mob. A local election is coming up, with a fierce race being run by men from two different factions: the Empiricists, who take elevators literally, and examine them by looking at their pieces; and the Intuitionists, who listen to the sounds of an elevator and intuit it's workings by a kind of synesthesia. Lila Mae is an Intuitionist, perhaps the best living Intuitionist, with a 100% success rate and an almost spiritual understanding of her craft. Which makes it even more shocking when an elevator she has recently inspected goes into total freefall, a catastrophic accident at a crucial moment. Was it sabotage? Has Lila Mae been set up, and if so, by whom? And what to make of the rumored plans of a "black box", a perfect elevator, which are being whispered of throughout the Department?

The subject of this mystery (elevators? really?) is so bizarre that it leads an almost dreamy quality to some of the characters' concerns. However, Lila Mae's experiences of institutionalized racism are firmly grounded and never shied away from. This contrast- the levity of the absurd, the gravity of the real- is what makes this book so great. This was my first dip into Colson Whitehead's writing and I will definitely be reading more!