The Underground Railroad

Whitehead can't seem to decide if he wants to write a novel or an essay. When he focuses on the novel, the results are salutary. The prose is rich and descriptive and powerfully depicts the horrific injustice taking place. But Whitehead can't seem to help adding a didactic element to the prose that doesn't mesh with the protagonist. Whitehead wanted to say something, and shoehorned it into Coras thoughts in a clumsy and obtuse way. We know the thoughts are Whiteheads, not Coras. The same message could have been delivered more deftly and better integrated with the protagonists character, or through other mechanisms. Furthermore, the railroad theme is interesting, but wasn't deployed as effectively as it could have been.

The first 40% of the novel superb , but things start to unravel from North Carolina onward.

I feel like I've read a lot of books so far this year that I don't really have any strong thoughts on. This is another one of those. It's well written, but I don't think I was thoroughly engaged while reading through it.

I've had it on my to-read list for awhile and just picked it up because it's been turned into a TV show now and I heard something intriguing about the premise that I didn't realise before that sounded really neat, but ultimately I just thought this was okay. Oh well.