The Nix

The Nix by Nathan Hill

This book tells the story of a son whose mother abandoned him when he was just 11 years old. Fast forward

two decades, and his mother is thrust back in his life when she commits an act of political protest that gets her in hot water with the law. This sets the son on a journey to understand her mother's past, which includes a brief but intense period living in Chicago in 1968 in the days leading up to and including the famous protests at the Democratic National Convention.

I really liked this book. The author did a great job of bringing the characters to life, of giving the reader insight into their interior lives and making you sympathetic to their flaws. In addition, I liked how it jumped back and forth in time, filling the reader in with enough details to deepen their understanding of the events in question while leaving enough mystery to make them want to read on. Though this was a big book, at more than 500 pages, I flew through it. Highly recommended.

The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

In this book, the author re-imagines the underground railroad as if it really were what we all thought it was

when we first learned about it: A literal underground railroad line stretching from the slave-holding south to the free north. The book follows the journey of one slave as she navigates this line. Along the way, she stops in several different states, each one of which is representative of a different time period in Southern history. The character starts in Georgia, which has slavery pretty much as we know it, and soon finds herself in South Carolina, where it appears black people are free -- much like they were in the early 20th century. In reality, though, there is only the illusion of freedom, as she finds out very quickly.

In the end, I found all the praise of Whitehead's book a little misguided. His conceit seems little more than a gimmick. For example, he never really has a good explanation for why the runaway slave has to stop in each state. If it's a railroad, why can't she simply ride it all the way to the north? Whitehead throws in small complications, but they don't really make sense. In addition, I'm not sure what he was trying to achieve by turning the metaphorical railroad into a literal one. It doesn't really change the experience of being a runaway, or really shed any new light on what it was like to live in that time period. It was a good read, but not nearly as profound and enlightening as the book powers-that-be seem to think it is.