6/1/2023 0 Comments Harlem shuffle reviewThe story begins in 1959 and culminates shortly after The Harlem Riots of 1964 in the wake of the killing of a 15-year-old boy by a white policeman. Though the novel stars Ray and his bumbling, junked out cousin Freddie, who hustles him into robbery schemes, the real star of the book is Harlem in the early '60s, where everyone of every class and complexion - rich, poor, criminal, banker, wino, police, con - is on the make and take, and where stolen stuff “churns” - “goes in and goes out like the tides.” He’s a reluctant crook, but a compliant one. His business degree proudly hangs in his office next to a signed photo of Lena Horne. They live with their two children in cramped quarters not far from the furniture store Ray owns on 125th Street. Ray’s a decent guy, a graduate of Queens College, married to upper-class lovely Elizabeth, daughter of Harlem elite. So here he is again, straight off the horrors of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, with Harlem Shuffle, a comic crime caper set in Harlem in the ’60s, and featuring Ray Carney, son of a dead notorious bad bro. There will likely never be an adjective “Whiteheadian” - like Wordsworthian, Joycean or Dickensian - because Colson Whitehead, National Book Award recipient and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, now out with his 10th book, does not prioritize subject matter or genre.
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