crabbygirl reviewed Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
Review of 'Harlem Shuffle' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Well-titled for a book of 3 self-standing stories about Ray Carney, an entrepreneurial furniture store owner who comes from criminal stock. Whether by accident of his bad-luck cousin, or predetermination from his father, Ray moves deeper, and more comfortably, into crime with each successive story. Tellingly, he also trades up in the real estate market; his ambition neatly symbolised in his yearning to expand both his furniture store and move his family to a coveted apartment on Riverside Drive. Heck, by the end of the series, Ray is well on his way to attaining the address and social position of the father-in-law he disdains as phoney at the very start.
Whitehead is a master story teller: I was riveted at times, the scenes unspooling like an old-fashioned Ocean's Eleven. And it's not just the story, it is the way he tells it: dropping the proper hints of future survival so …
Well-titled for a book of 3 self-standing stories about Ray Carney, an entrepreneurial furniture store owner who comes from criminal stock. Whether by accident of his bad-luck cousin, or predetermination from his father, Ray moves deeper, and more comfortably, into crime with each successive story. Tellingly, he also trades up in the real estate market; his ambition neatly symbolised in his yearning to expand both his furniture store and move his family to a coveted apartment on Riverside Drive. Heck, by the end of the series, Ray is well on his way to attaining the address and social position of the father-in-law he disdains as phoney at the very start.
Whitehead is a master story teller: I was riveted at times, the scenes unspooling like an old-fashioned Ocean's Eleven. And it's not just the story, it is the way he tells it: dropping the proper hints of future survival so that the reader can relax the greater tension in favour of drinking in the glorious details. Of the 3 stories, Dorvay was my favourite; such a perfect capturing of Ray's attempt to keep the upstanding citizen and shady businessman separate. Plus it was a more honest telling of a character's development when Whitehead drops the excuse of my-cousin-made-me-do-it that is the motivation of the other 2 stories.
The last of the 3 stories was the weakest: showcasing the most violence (first with alarm, then with a shrug) which might be enough to indict the whole effort given that we are expected to keep identifying with Ray. But there was also a heavy-handedness to it as it contorted to reflect currently fashionable views, as when a nothing character - apropos of nothing - riffs on the stealing of Native lands. Given the tendency of what-aboutism derailing a book, I have to wonder if Whitehead's editor asked for more 'right side of history' commentary.