The intuitionist

So, there were some really sharp lines, interesting intrigue, and then it just turned into a slog. I'm sure this is great if you're a lit professor or something, but I'm not. I just wanted a good book to read, not a homework assignment. My favorite scene was the dime-a-dance place, and it had absolutely zero to do with anything else in the story, but it had the most emotion.

I didn't expect to enjoy a book about elevators so much. But then it's really not about elevators. It's in large part about race, about different forms of seeing and experiencing the world, all wrapped up in a compelling mystery.

It's a critique of kinds of knowledge that proclaim themselves as absolute and the bearers of truth, especially when that knowledge is used to uphold forms of oppression. It's a gesture towards other forms of being and knowing, ones that at times elude detection by the powers that be as a means of survival or marronage and at others confront them head on, empowered to create a new world.

It's engaging, accessible, empathic, surprising, and witty. And also talks a lot about elevators.

A gripping racial allegory with an engaging mystery.

A peculiar halting noir with two main features. The story is one of mid-twentieth century type bigotry set in a Steampunk-like world where there are two battling philosophies on the nature and function of elevators, the Empiricists and the Intuitionists. The protagonist is an African-American Intuitionist elevator inspector-ess who takes the role of the detective and becomes something more than that. Among the author’s various accomplishments are the avoidance of all the puns and simple metaphors that spring to mind, including who is taking the fall when an elevator plunges to its destruction and the significance of the elevation of the African-American characters to become elevator inspectors. Ultimately, I think the reader’s question will be, “Is there some other message for me here in this complex construction?” If I knew, I would rate this more highly.