-
The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
- A Novel
- Narrated by: JD Jackson, Colson Whitehead
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Audible Premium Plus
$14.95 a month
Buy for $24.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Interview: Colson Whitehead shares why he was called to examine the horrific activities in one Florida reform school through the eyes of a young black boy in his follow-up to the award-winning Underground Railroad.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Underground Railroad (Oprah's Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Newest Oprah Book Club 2016 Selection. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood - where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned - Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
-
-
Stupendous book, hard to follow in audio
- By JQR on 12-01-16
By: Colson Whitehead
-
The Vanishing Half
- A Novel
- By: Brit Bennett
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, Southern Black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: Their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past.
-
-
Soap opera material
- By Sheila S on 06-06-20
By: Brit Bennett
-
The Dutch House
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Tom Hanks
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother.
-
-
Not my favorite Patchett
- By Regina on 12-07-19
By: Ann Patchett
-
Die Nickel Boys
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Torben Kessler
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nach dem Triumph von Underground Railroad der neue Roman von Colson Whitehead Florida, Anfang der 1960er-Jahre. Der sechzehnjährige Elwood lebt mit seiner Großmutter im schwarzen Ghetto von Tallahassee und ist ein Bewunderer Martin Luther Kings. Als er einen Platz am College bekommt, scheint sein Traum von gesellschaftlicher Veränderung in Erfüllung zu gehen. Doch durch einen Zufall gerät er in ein gestohlenes Auto und wird ohne gerechtes Verfahren in die Besserungsanstalt Nickel Academy gesperrt. Dort werden die Jungen missbraucht, gepeinigt und ausgenutzt.
-
-
This is NOT in English!!
- By April V on 11-09-19
By: Colson Whitehead
-
American Dirt (Oprah's Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 16 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier, the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city, is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
-
-
Stereotypes and melodrama
- By Nat Smith on 01-27-20
By: Jeanine Cummins
-
The Water Dancer (Oprah’s Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her - but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North.
-
-
Pay attention
- By Amazon Customer on 11-13-19
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
-
The Underground Railroad (Oprah's Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Newest Oprah Book Club 2016 Selection. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood - where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned - Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
-
-
Stupendous book, hard to follow in audio
- By JQR on 12-01-16
By: Colson Whitehead
-
The Vanishing Half
- A Novel
- By: Brit Bennett
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, Southern Black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: Their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past.
-
-
Soap opera material
- By Sheila S on 06-06-20
By: Brit Bennett
-
The Dutch House
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Tom Hanks
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother.
-
-
Not my favorite Patchett
- By Regina on 12-07-19
By: Ann Patchett
-
Die Nickel Boys
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Torben Kessler
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nach dem Triumph von Underground Railroad der neue Roman von Colson Whitehead Florida, Anfang der 1960er-Jahre. Der sechzehnjährige Elwood lebt mit seiner Großmutter im schwarzen Ghetto von Tallahassee und ist ein Bewunderer Martin Luther Kings. Als er einen Platz am College bekommt, scheint sein Traum von gesellschaftlicher Veränderung in Erfüllung zu gehen. Doch durch einen Zufall gerät er in ein gestohlenes Auto und wird ohne gerechtes Verfahren in die Besserungsanstalt Nickel Academy gesperrt. Dort werden die Jungen missbraucht, gepeinigt und ausgenutzt.
-
-
This is NOT in English!!
- By April V on 11-09-19
By: Colson Whitehead
-
American Dirt (Oprah's Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 16 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier, the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city, is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
-
-
Stereotypes and melodrama
- By Nat Smith on 01-27-20
By: Jeanine Cummins
-
The Water Dancer (Oprah’s Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her - but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North.
-
-
Pay attention
- By Amazon Customer on 11-13-19
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
-
Deacon King Kong
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride's funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird.
-
-
Masterpiece
- By Linda G McDonough on 05-17-20
By: James McBride
-
Caste (Oprah's Book Club)
- The Origins of Our Discontents
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
-
-
Brilliant, articulate, highly listenable.
- By GM on 08-05-20
By: Isabel Wilkerson
-
A Promised Land
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 29 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency - a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.
-
-
Soothing, Oratorical and Insightful
- By Constance on 11-17-20
By: Barack Obama
-
Less
- By: Andrew Sean Greer
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You are a failed novelist about to turn 50. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: Your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes - it would be too awkward - and you can't say no - it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. Question: How do you arrange to skip town? Answer: You accept them all.
-
-
Endearing, funny, but sometimes overly clever
- By Lili on 07-30-17
-
Homegoing
- A Novel
- By: Yaa Gyasi
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in 18th-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and will live in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising children who will be sent abroad to be educated before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the empire. Esi, imprisoned beneath Effia in the castle's women's dungeon and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, will be sold into slavery.
-
-
Beautiful and Haunting
- By Rick on 05-07-19
By: Yaa Gyasi
-
The Topeka School
- A Novel
- By: Ben Lerner
- Narrated by: Nancy Linari, Peter Berkrot, Tristan Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adam Gordon is a senior at Topeka High School, class of ’97. His mother, Jane, is a famous feminist author; his father, Jonathan, is an expert at getting "lost boys" to open up. They both work at a psychiatric clinic that has attracted staff and patients from around the world. Adam is a renowned debater, expected to win a national championship before he heads to college. He is one of the cool kids, ready to fight or, better, freestyle about fighting if it keeps his peers from thinking of him as weak.
-
-
Strong novel about 1990s
- By citizen, jazzmania on 01-11-20
By: Ben Lerner
-
Shuggie Bain
- By: Douglas Stuart
- Narrated by: Angus King
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shuggie’s mother Agnes walks a wayward path: She is Shuggie’s guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good - her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor.
-
-
Rather Interesting, Very Unfortunate
- By Sharey on 02-29-20
By: Douglas Stuart
-
The Overstory
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits 100 years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another.
-
-
Loved the first half, struggled with the second
- By Max and Kimmy on 05-10-19
By: Richard Powers
-
The Sellout
- A Novel
- By: Paul Beatty
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality: the black Chinese restaurant.
-
-
Do Yourself a Favor - Listen to Another Book
- By AuntGert on 11-16-16
By: Paul Beatty
-
The Sympathizer
- A Novel
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Francois Chau
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2016. It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.
-
-
The Great Vietnamese Novel(Port)Nguyen's Complaint
- By Joe Kraus on 03-31-16
-
Anxious People
- A Novel
- By: Fredrik Backman
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix their own marriage. There’s a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can’t seem to agree on anything.
-
-
Read. This. Now.
- By DIY Sammy on 09-09-20
By: Fredrik Backman
-
The Midnight Library
- A Novel
- By: Matt Haig
- Narrated by: Carey Mulligan
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice. In The Midnight Library, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist, she must search within herself....
-
-
Exceptional.
- By Richard B. on 10-05-20
By: Matt Haig
Publisher's Summary
In this Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times best-selling follow-up to The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys unjustly sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
When Elwood Curtis, a Black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow "delinquent" Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood’s ideals and Turner’s skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.
Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers and “should further cement Whitehead as one of his generation's best" (Entertainment Weekly).
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
One of the Best Books of the Year: Time, Esquire, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Slate, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Vox, Variety, Christian Science Monitor, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, Literary Hub, BuzzFeed, The New York Public Library.
New York Times best seller
National Book Critics Circle Award finalist
One of Time Magazine's 10 Best Fiction Books of the Decade
Winner of the Kirkus Prize
Longlisted for the National Book Award
Longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2020
Critic Reviews
"A necessary read." (President Barack Obama)
"This is a powerful book by one of America's great writers.... Without sentimentality, in as intense and finely crafted a book as you'll ever read, Whitehead tells a story of American history that won’t allow you to see the country in the same way again." (Toronto Star)
"Colson Whitehead continues to make a classic American genre his own.... The narration is disciplined and the sentences plain and sturdy, oars cutting into water. Every chapter hits its marks.... Whitehead comports himself with gravity and care, the steward of painful, suppressed histories; his choices on the page can feel as much ethical as aesthetic. The ordinary language, the clear pane of his prose, lets the stories speak for themselves.... Whitehead has written novels of horror and apocalypse; nothing touches the grimness of the real stories he conveys here." (The New York Times)
Featured Article: 10 Great Contemporary Fiction Authors
If you like well-written novels that prioritize compelling timely storylines with artful prose and structure, then this is the genre for you. So, why is it called "contemporary"? Because it’s fiction set in the real world, in times contemporary to the date it was published, and the stories deal with real-world issues. Representing a diversity of backgrounds and nationalities, here are our picks for the best writers of contemporary fiction over the last 50 years.
Editor's Pick
He’s done it again
"Nobody does historical fiction like Colson Whitehead. His Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Underground Railroad knocked us all out in 2016 and I’m pretty sure The Nickel Boys is on that same trajectory. Based on a real reformatory school and set in the last years of Jim Crow, this story focuses on Elwood Curtis, a young black man trying to survive the horrors that go on within the grounds of The Nickel Academy—an institution more akin to a torturous prison than the academic institution it’s been advertised as. What keeps him going? The words of his hero, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a belief that it will get better. The Nickel Boys is a beautiful and devastating story that gives a voice to the boys who were abused and killed at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys all those years ago."
—Aaron S., Audible Editor
More from the same
What listeners say about The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Darwin8u
- 02-06-20
Who spoke for the black boys?
“If it is true for you, it is true for someone else, and you are no longer alone.” ― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys I'm absolutely sure that there is something beautiful about losing a limb; a leg or arm. This book is beautiful too, but on the first read I'm still just bent over trying to handle the hit in the cut, the pain and the blood. Maybe, if I read it a second time I could experience it without the horror and the pain. But, all of that is necessary, and because of my privilege temporary. Many Americans experienced/experience this book without the ability I have to exit the experience and 'close the book.' Whitehead is an amazing writer. He is clever, funny, and writes amazing prose, but behind that is an axe and a steamroller. He destroyed me. Sorry if this is disjointed. I'm trying to piece myself together after. Obviously, the Nickel Academy can stand for a lot of things. It can be a metaphor for how we treat black men and boys. It can be a metaphor how we treat minorities in America. It can be a metaphor for our prison system (6 times as many blacks are incarcerated in America than whites). It is all of these things. The horrible thing is this isn't a metaphor. It happened, or something close to it happened, at Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, FL. It is hard too not to love the two main characters who take two different approaches to the experience of racism and the experience at Nickel. Elwood Curtis is an idealist, raised on an MLK record, who feels like doing the right thing is important, despite the consequences. Turner, his friend, is a skeptic and a survivor. He will shift and move AND survive. Nickel Boys shows how these two friends experience the abuse and power of a racist, white Florida. This is a story that, like many James Baldwin and Toni Morrison novels, MUST be read.
11 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Shathadute
- 09-18-19
not bad really
After experiencing The Underground Railroad, this one left me feeling at times uninterested. It's a topic that has been done before, like with the novel Sleepers, in terms of abuse at a school for boys. Possibly due to the lack of character exploration in this one, I did not sympathize for the boys as much as I felt that I should. I'm on the fence about the narration.
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sam C.
- 09-18-19
Good, but lacking
This is an overall good book. The book reads as if the story should be longer, but is cut short for some reason.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Chem is Try
- 09-10-19
Possible written for high school students
I expect this will be a great pick for high school literature classes. The topic should provide a LOT of great discussion. However, students will certainly not gain a lot of depth about the reform school subject and its impact on discrimination from this book. Luckily, Whitehead provides his resources in the epilogue.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- james
- 08-01-19
4.08 stars...
This audiobook is good, and the narrator is good. While I didn't love The Nickel Boys as much as many of the other reviewers did, it held my attention, and I was interested in the outcome. To me, it felt like a shortened version of a much longer tale, as if the original story had been hacked in to snippets by an overzealous editor. I found Whitehead's previous novel, The Underground Railroad, to be a better read/listen. It's still good, though. Overall rating: 4.08 stars
17 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- iamLaurenKelsey
- 07-23-19
A New Classic
It's difficult for me to put into words how much this book has meant to me and impacted me. It's an unforgettable story, that reaches deep down into your bones. The author uses rich metaphors and beautifully descriptions to paint a harrowing picture of how hope mixes in with the meanness and blindness that evil can display. It's not a dark book; in fact, it's the opposite. It is filled with hope, filled with a story of perseverance, and the importance self-definition and resilience. To me, it represents a story about boys and men. How they impact each other, in productive and non-productive, and very harmful ways. It's also a story about friendship and connection, when most of your life has lacked those two vital things. I've sent a copy to all of my friends, begging them to read it. As a woman, I think it's important to recognize that the environment men were raised in, and how it deeply impacts their present day reality.
20 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lorenzo Porricelli
- 07-20-19
True life Jim Crow that tears my heart apart.
Unreal. A true story that is more than a disconcerting life experience. This is Jim Crow, alive and snarling . Do well written, I was there, a prisoner
14 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mary Herrington-Perry
- 08-05-19
The Social History Beats the Narrative
Important and interesting social history and a fine and unexpected ending make this book worth listening to even though the narrative and the narration are a bit dull.
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- ilene
- 07-22-19
Hard to Believe
This book is very well written and has the ability to take you into the lives of the characters. I had to put the book down several times to digest the horrors done to these young men. This book is a serious representation of racism and injustice and the lasting internal and external scars of abuse.
9 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Gabriella Keener
- 07-25-19
Wonderful Book!!
What an amazing story - beautifully written, brilliantly narrated. Heartbreaking and heartwarming. Just profoundly moving. I’ve read Underground Railroad, which I also loved. Will be eagerly looking for more books by Mr. Whitehead.
7 people found this helpful