While this was not my favorite Colson Whitehead, I really enjoyed it. As always Whitehead delivers a well thought out story with memorable characters

I haven't read a Colson Whitehead book that I didn't like & Harlem Shuffle was no exception. His writing just drops you right into whichever space & time he wants to convey. I actually ended up listening to the audiobook, which Dion Graham expertly narrates, & I felt like the audiobook elevated the story even further. This is a book that appears to be about one thing but is about so much more & it deserved a lot more attention than it received in the fall.

Like everything Colson Whitehead writes, the prose was beautiful. The only thing that slowed me down quite a bit was the fact that gagsters and heists are not my favourite genre to read. The characters were so multi faceted and well developed that I enjoyed it more than I have any other book in the genre. It will certainly be my go to recommendation for anyone looking to read this genre for the first time.

Whitehead is an incredibly talented writer, able to evoke time and place so masterfully for his reader.

Unfortunately, I just could not make my way into this world. I could hear, smell, see and imagine myself in this particular place and time, but the narrative just could not grab my attention the way I anticipated. Perhaps it's just the moment at which I am currently reading it and personal perspective getting in my way.

I would like to give this book another shot one day in the future, with a clearer head. I adore Colson Whitehead's writing.

Loved this. Featured it in the September instalment of Novel Encounters, my column highlighting the month's top fiction for Zed, Zoomer magazine’s reading and books section.
(Full review feature at link.)

Miami Joe, Big Mike, Yea Big, Cheap Brucie, Chink Montague, Tommy Lips, Dootsie Bell, Bumpy Johnson, Sid the Sud King, Corky Bell, Zippo, Chet the Vet, Biz Dixon

These are just some of the characters you’ll meet in Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle, a story about Harlem furniture salesman Ray Carney in the 1960s. As we soon discover, Ray’s also engaged in some less-than-legal business dealings as Whitehead builds out the underworld ecosystem of 1960s Harlem. And while we spend most of our time with the conflicts amongst Harlem’s crime world, eventually, the lines between Ray’s world and the world of New York’s powerful white Park Avenue families are drawn together.

I initially had a slow start with this, probably due to it being such a departure from my usual reading fare but once I settled into this noirish crime tale, I began to be invested. Whitehead immerses us entirely in the world and, although narration is third person, it subtly shifts perspective from character to character. We know when we’re in Ray’s head, because no matter what is happening, he can’t help but identify the make and model of furniture around him whilst when we’re with his cousin Freddie or “colleague” Pepper, the view will be informed by a life more firmly criminal.

I enjoyed being inside of this world rather than looking at it from a distance. I found I passed judgement less, felt empathy for characters, and ultimately accepted the terms of this world as it was. Which is not to say that Whitehead doesn’t still give readers things to reflect on: race riots, police brutality and corruption, and the corruption and crime of those in power.

Ultimately, I thoroughly enjoyed this read. Once it got going, I didn’t want to put it down. For all of his flaws, I liked Ray and wanted things to work out for him. It was exciting, dangerous, and at times, funny. I could easily envision a limited series based on the book so, fingers crossed, someone decides to do that.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for this aARC in exchange for an honest review.

A novel with a strong sense of place and a vast cast of characters. It would have been helpful for me to take notes on characters as they were introduced. I am amazed at the number of issues Whitehead packed into these pages and how sympathetic I felt toward all of the characters. Whitehead is a masterful writer.

3.5 Stars

This crime caper novel full of heists, shakedowns and rip-offs is set in Harlem. Its three sections, set in 1959, 1961 and 1964, have the protagonist becoming more and more involved in the criminal underworld.

Ray Carney, a self-made man who owns a furniture store in Harlem, “was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked.” Though he wants the reputation of an honest purveyor of home furnishings, he does accept goods and jewelry of unknown provenance from his hapless cousin Freddie, a small-time crook. Though Freddie’s repeated refrain is “’I didn’t mean to get you in trouble,’” he pulls Ray further into criminal activities which bring him into contact with corrupt cops and local crime lords and place him in dangerous situations. Ray’s father was a hoodlum and, though Ray wants to escape the criminal legacy of his father, “to disavow the crooked inclinations of his nature,” he seems unable to wrest himself from his roots because “the original foundation held him up, unseen in the dirt.”

Initially, it was difficult for me to become interested. Heist novels are not a favourite genre. Because I had accepted a galley in return for a review, I persisted and gradually I did become more interested in Ray’s attempts to balance his crooked and straight lives. His inner conflict is clearly developed: he wants to have a legitimate, honest business which will allow him to support his family, but financial security evades him despite his education and hard work. His ambition means the temptation of quick money is difficult to resist. His love for and loyalty to Freddie who is like a brother to him also makes it difficult to refuse his cousin when he comes pleading for help.

Ray is a complex character who arouses complicated emotions. I found myself rooting for him because he wants to better himself and provide for his wife and children whom he loves. His dreams are thwarted by circumstances; certainly racism challenges his efforts to be an upstanding citizen. For instance, when he wants to be licensed to sell a particular line of furniture, he is told, “’We don’t cater to Negro gentlemen.’” When he wants to join a Black social club to make contacts, he knows he will not be accepted because he is too dark. Civil rights protests and riots endanger his business: “Carney knew firsthand how hard it was for a Negro shopkeeper to persuade an insurance company to write a policy. The vandalism and looting had wiped out a lot of people. Whole livelihoods gone, like that.” Ray has so much stacked against him.

On the other hand, I found myself becoming impatient and frustrated with Ray. His brotherly loyalty to Freddie is admirable at first, and I feel sorry for his being dragged into Freddie’s schemes. However, when Freddie’s escapades endanger Ray’s family, it’s time for Ray to stop “plotting a safe route of travel for his cousin” and bailing him out. What happens to Freddie is inevitable, and Ray should have stepped away sooner: “How long do you keep trying to save something that has been lost?” The novel’s second section focuses on Ray’s desire for revenge and that certainly stripped away my sympathy for him. When Ray’s financial situation improves, especially after Elizabeth returns to work, so that he doesn’t really need to continue his crooked dealings, he persists, admitting “He was no longer a mere errand boy for uptown crooks but a proper middleman.”

Ray’s relationship with Elizabeth left me puzzled. We are not given her perspective, but Ray seems to believe that his wife knows nothing about his underworld activities. For instance, he thinks, “Elizabeth would leave his ass in a second when she found out about his crooked side. Call the cops herself if thugs came knocking.” He often leaves the house in the middle of the night, “keeping crooked hours,” and she suspects nothing?

The book has a very strong sense of place. Harlem with its culture and politics comes alive. Whitehead describes “The black city and the white city: overlapping, ignorant of each other, separate and connected by tracks.” Certainly the criminal underworld and the legitimate world intersect.

I have read Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys. Though I preferred them to Harlem Shuffle, that is not to say that this latest novel is not worth reading.

Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Ray Carney is trying to take the mostly straight and narrow path to running a business and raising a family in 1950’s Harlem. His father was a well known criminal who was involved in robberies and in the numbers game. With a troubled cousin named Freddie who Ray lived with as a child for a while, Ray does his best to help him out when he can. But in Freddie’s latest hi jinx, he wants to bring Ray in on a job to rob a fine hotel in the area. Ray tells him he doesn’t want to get involved but Freddie fails to inform the rest of the crew of this and soon Ray is finding buyers for some precious jewels. Ray is taught how to recognize quality and change his business model and is drawn to the benefits that come with more income.

It is a meeting he has with the distinguished Dumas club of which he wants to be a part of, that results in Ray adjusting his mindset and vowing avengment.

Ray Carney tries his best to look out for Freddie as they are cousins but Freddie is a slippery fish.

I had some mixed feelings while reading this book. Firstly it took me many days to read it. It didn’t hold by interest for long enough periods of my time. The characters also seemed a bit flat for me.

What this novel did have though were some strong commentary on racism, policing, white privilege. The imagery of the 1950’s and 60s were vivid and clearly well researched. The underlying themes and background story were what drew my attention. While I understand that the author was proposing this story to be part of the greater climate, I would have enjoyed seeing more crossover.

This crime heist novel is a departure from the author’s previous works and I did appreciate this foray into a new sub genre.

Overall I did enjoy this book but not as much as I enjoyed The Nickel Boys or The Underground Railroad.

Thank you to @netgalley and @penguinrandomca for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinions. I am looking forward to reading more of Colson Whitehead’s work. Harlem Shuffle publishes September 14, 2021.

4.5. Loved this! It was a drastic change of tone from Underground Railroad and Nickel Boys, and Whitehead absolutely pulled it off.

This isn’t the kind of story I would usually go for, but I gave it a shot because it’s Whitehead, and I’m glad I did. I really enjoyed it. If you’re in the same boat, I say give it a try.

One thing that’s a constant with his books, though, is my reading experience: I feel like you must be extremely attentive at all times, and you don’t have the luxury to zone out for a second or two. In Harlem Shuffle in particular, there are so many characters and places to remember, it’s easy to get lost. Some of those names you’re tempted to gloss over and forget, but trust me, they will come back later, and you’ll want to remember them.

The story did lose some steam in the third part, in my opinion, hence the rounding down.

Harlem Shuffle was a tie breaker book for me with Colson Whitehead - I loved Nickel Boys and DNF-ed Underground Railroad - and I was curious to see where I'd land on the "fun:" crime book he postponed for Nickel Boys.
Harlem Shuffle is 3 vignettes in the life of Ray Carney, a furniture salesman that is only slightly crooked - as compared to his deceased father and scheming cousin. The characters were largely great, the setting was vivid, and the caper plotting was really fun. However, it reads as Ray going about his life until Freddie brings him into the land of criminality - Ray isn't a man of action, he begrudgingly helps Freddie on several occasions, but his internal struggle between good and crook (from the summary) isn't very vivid. Separately from that, we don't spend much time with Freddie to get into his motivations, so he just crops up as a useless annoyance - he isn't clever, capable, or charismatic, he's just a suck.
If only Ray's cousin had been Pepper - my god, a more fun criminal duo haven't crossed my literary fiction path.
Thank you to the publisher, via NetGalley, for providing me with an arc for review,

I’ve always found Colson Whitehead to be a cerebral writer, for good and for ill. It’s good to know that there’s a smart African American man out there writing works of fiction that make you think, but at least one book of his that I read seemed to be kind of nebulous. That book was his debut 1999 novel, The Intuitionist. I picked that one up in a bargain bin at a chain bookstore in 2005 when I was visiting Montreal for work, and I have to say that I didn’t get it. Maybe I was too young for it and hadn’t read my share of difficult novels to appreciate it. It is what it is, though. Better was his 2011 zombie novel, Zone One, but I felt that book was marred by too much of a downbeat ending. Now, after winning two Pulitzer Prizes for other novels since then, Whitehead is back with a book that is both a family saga and a volume of hard-nosed crime entitled Harlem Shuffle. The novel is easy to understand but is still a bit of a hard read because its tone is a smidge pessimistic.

Set against the titular Harlem backdrop of the late 1950s and early ’60s, the book concerns a Black furniture salesman named Ray Carney. He leads a double life: few people know that he was raised by crooks and is a bit of a crook himself. While he does sell new furniture to a Black clientele, we meet him as he’s fencing stolen goods, some of which are procured by his cousin, Freddie. When Freddie accidentally brings Ray in on a big jewel heist on a wealthy Black Manhattan establishment, Ray finds himself dealing with more and more various lowlifes and corrupt policemen. Can Ray keep his identities split enough to protect his young family as well as his cousin? Will Ray be able to afford an apartment on the ritzy Riverside Drive on the straight and narrow or will he be mired in his plight and turn full-time to a life of crime just to rise above? The answers are in the novel.

While Harlem Shuffle is a book about how white people screw over Blacks through gentrification, it is just as much a book about how Blacks don’t help their “brothers” out, or at least the only way they can help is through bringing them in on criminal activities. There’s a subplot that involves Ray trying to get into a Black country club that his father-in-law is a member of but is stymied in his attempts by being “too Black.” Harlem Shuffle is preoccupied with the notion that you can only legitimately make it as a person of colour only if you have light skin, and the rest of the Black community must hustle in the underworld if they want to make it rich. That’s what makes the book so hard to read: the unvarnished truth of the situation. Ray finds himself deeper and deeper into crime as his stock rises, and it is clear that he would rather be legit to serve the needs of his family. In the end, Ray finds out where his true place lies to be of any service to the Black community. But getting there is quite the struggle.

Still, if you can get past the grimy plot, Harlem Shuffle can be a fun read. Whitehead has researched his subject matter, so there’s a lot of intricacies here, too. If you ever wanted to know what it was like to be a Black businessman in the late ’50s, and a furniture salesman to boot, you’ll enjoy this read. The crime aspect of the book is enjoyably hard-boiled, and Whitehead proves yet again that he can sprint across genres as he has for much of his career and not be pigeonholed to one style of writing. You’ll never be sure which way the plot is going to turn next, and you will be kept on your toes for much of it. However, it’s the nuances about Black life that make the book instructive — and, I hope, to as much of a white audience as possible. You know, I’ve generally never really liked rap music much for its glorification of gangster culture, but Harlem Shuffle pinpoints why Black culture must be that way. It seems that the only way to “make it” is to run the streets. Legit opportunities are limited and, when they’re not, they could be limiting.

In the end, Harlem Shuffle feels like an important work. Whether or not it’ll win Whitehead a third Pulitzer is to be determined, but it is a tour-de-force of what it is like to live in a Black person’s shoes and be faced with the choices and opportunities that they have, particularly when it comes to servicing the needs of their community. You’ll read this book and understand why there’s a drug epidemic among Black people — they need some sort of escapism when they seemingly just can’t get ahead because of the roadblocks of their race. And not just roadblocks put up by whites, but of other Blacks to some extent as well. In the end, Harlem Shuffle is a thoughtful, provoking read. It has a tough, yet crucial, pill to swallow, and the subtext of this book makes it hard to shake. You might find that this is a book that you’ll want to put down after reading only a few chapters because it’s so heady, but you’ll wind up rooting for the characters and hope that they pull through and come to live better lives. This is an eye-opener of a novel and should be read to come to some understandings and better truths about what faces the Black community — and that, even though this book is set roughly 60 years ago, very little has changed in some ways for them. Harlem Shuffle is commanding. There’s no better way to put it than that, other than this one is worth a look if you want to know what Black people face and have faced, both today and yesterday.