Harlem Shuffle - Rambling Readers

Paperback, 538 pages

Published Sept. 14, 2021 by Random House Large Print.

ISBN:: 978-0-593-46018-4

(1 review)

To his customers and neighbours on 125th Street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normality has more than a few cracks in it.

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops of the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa - the 'Waldorf of Harlem' - and volunteers Ray's services as the fence.

Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?

3 editions

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.