The Nickel Boys

Heartbreaking.

I prefer to know as little about a book going in as possible. If it's good by reputation and of a general subject matter to interest me — or if it seems an especially important work, as this one — then I prefer to take the ride the author intends, discovering the book in the initial read. Such was the power of ‘The Nickel Boys' that I was unsure if I was reading a disguised memoir, what they unfortunately now refer to as a ‘nonfiction novel', or if it was a work of pure, if brutalized imagination. The truth was, as many truths are, somewhere in the middle. Based on the all-too-real Dozier School for Boys, this book's characters may be fictional but their stories are true. From here arises the heartbreak.

It is unfortunate that the story which unfolds is in many ways predictable. Stories of brutalized prisoners litter history as do stories of abused children, and the story of the torture of the Black Man in America is so common that it has permanently warped us as nation, an eternal specter hovering over the shoulder of anyone speaking of American exceptionalism and greatness. ‘The Nickel Boys' is very much a story of that torture, but these tortured boys were not only black, and so calling this a story of black oppression doesn't quite hit the mark. Should we ask how can we as a society imprison our young? I think the question is larger than even that: Can we really punish people into falling in line? This seems to me the greatest myth in a book filled with the misdeeds of people acting out whole hosts of destructive myths. While it is surely necessary to remove people who endanger others, the notion that we need to do so brutally in order to punish is one of the great tragedies of society. We should imprison with regret, trepidation. We should mourn all those whose freedoms are so taken away, no matter how warranted. Until we can do so, ideas of greatness and exceptionalism need to be stricken from our collective hearts.

Colson Whitehead is a very good writer, at least as far as this book demonstrates. I've not yet read another. The novel's power is found in the story's arc, and so reading ‘The Nickel Boys' in one sitting would be best. At about 250 pages, this is not unreasonable. Much of the book is a straightforward telling, without artifice and literary tricks. Whitehead understands language and can dip into poetic registers when it suits the narrative, but generally let's the power of the story tell itself. Mostly it's an important book. And heartbreaking. Did I mention heartbreaking?