Another brilliantly written literary novel by Colson Whitehead. This is a powerful story narrated by Elwood about his experience at the Nickel Academy in 1960's Florida. The story is based on real-life traumatic experiences of young men at a reform school that impacted young lives in harmful ways for over a hundred years.
This novel is short at just over 200 pages, but it is dense. There are lots of names to keep straight and jumping timelines to keep straight. It is disheartening how horribly these 'students' were treated and how they were confined and punished for problematic behaviour, or would simply disappear.
I think if I hadn't of been reading this for the Reading Rush readathon, I could have picked up more from it if I read and paused and allowed time to soak it all in. There is a lot that can be analyzed from this novel and I am not surprised it won the Pulitzer Prize at all!
I would love to see this adapted to film, because it is a powerful story that could be transcended to more audiences that way.