English language
Published May 2, 2016 by Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
The Underground Railroad is a historical fiction novel by American author Colson Whitehead, published by Doubleday in 2016. The alternate history novel tells the story of Cora and Caesar, two slaves in the southeastern United States during the 19th century, who make a bid for freedom from their Georgia plantation by following the Underground Railroad, which the novel depicts as a rail transport system with safe houses and secret routes. The book was a critical and commercial success, hitting the bestseller lists and winning several literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award for Fiction, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. A TV series adaptation written and directed by Barry Jenkins was released in May 2021.
An American epic. Shorter than The Amazing Adventures Kavalier & Clay, but no less successful in creating an original hero.
The passage where they travel through a burned-out version of Tennessee will stay with me for a long time.
An American epic. Shorter than The Amazing Adventures Kavalier & Clay, but no less successful in creating an original hero.
The passage where they travel through a burned-out version of Tennessee will stay with me for a long time.
An American epic. Shorter than The Amazing Adventures Kavalier & Clay, but no less successful in creating an original hero.
The passage where they travel through a burned-out version of Tennessee will stay with me for a long time.
"[...] E a América também é uma ilusão, a maior de todas. A raça branca acredita - acredita do fundo do coração - que é direito dela tomar a terra. Matar índios. Guerrear. Escravizar seus irmãos. Se há qualquer justiça no mundo, esta nação não deve existir, pois suas fundações são assassinato, roubo e crueldade. E no entanto aqui estamos."
In 'The Underground Railroad', de Colson Whitehead.
Hits hard from the very beginning and keeps on hitting. Three hundred pages of cruelty; suffering; the very worst of humanity. Brief moments of respite, in each of which our heroes pause, catch their breath, wonder whether they're safe at last. (Not-much-of-a-spoiler alert: they're not). Further suffering ensues.
I found it heavyhanded at times— then again how could it not be? — and the writing uneven: beautiful at times, a slog near the end; but maybe that was just me. Like other books I've read recently, the reader is kept at a distance, but with third-person narrative that distance feels clinical, objective, not uncaring; the absence of connection coming out of self-preservation, a necessary response to a lifetime of loss.
The "railroad" gimmick didn't really work for me, but it was a minor plot point overall, unobtrusive.
Whitehead writes with such precise and restrained prose it is easy to make a lot of assumptions in anticipation of the story as it unfolds. I'm guilty of that. Also guilty of being confused by his actual project as it emerged. In this novel, which I feel is less accessible than The Nickel Boys, the conceit that the underground railroad was an actual railroad running underground led me to assume this would be a fanciful tour of unrestrained wish fulfillment. I don't know why I assumed this but for some reason I expected Whitehead to use his powers as an author, descend on the plantations of the south, and save everyone, sort of like Tarantino murdering Hitler in Inglourius Basterds. This is not the project of The Underground Railroad, which is a serious story without any easy solutions, despite the extraordinary railroad.
The more I consider this novel, the more …
Whitehead writes with such precise and restrained prose it is easy to make a lot of assumptions in anticipation of the story as it unfolds. I'm guilty of that. Also guilty of being confused by his actual project as it emerged. In this novel, which I feel is less accessible than The Nickel Boys, the conceit that the underground railroad was an actual railroad running underground led me to assume this would be a fanciful tour of unrestrained wish fulfillment. I don't know why I assumed this but for some reason I expected Whitehead to use his powers as an author, descend on the plantations of the south, and save everyone, sort of like Tarantino murdering Hitler in Inglourius Basterds. This is not the project of The Underground Railroad, which is a serious story without any easy solutions, despite the extraordinary railroad.
The more I consider this novel, the more I'm surprised I expected anything different. Not only does the story of American slavery not have a happy ending, it doesn't really have an ending at all.
I struggle with books about slavery. I read them not because I expect to enjoy them, but from a sense of obligation. It's a big part of this country's history, so I need to force myself to look at it. There's no doubt that Whitehead is a skilled writer. He creates compelling characters and the words seem to flow effortlessly. I feel like I must be a lazy reader, because I don't understand what he was trying to achieve by making the railroad an actual railroad. The rest of the book seemed pretty true to history, so it felt like a bit of a distraction, like if he'd otherwise told a believable story and made one of the characters an alien. It just felt unnecessary and didn't - to my mind - serve any real literary purpose. I've not read any other books by him, so maybe I simply lack …
I struggle with books about slavery. I read them not because I expect to enjoy them, but from a sense of obligation. It's a big part of this country's history, so I need to force myself to look at it. There's no doubt that Whitehead is a skilled writer. He creates compelling characters and the words seem to flow effortlessly. I feel like I must be a lazy reader, because I don't understand what he was trying to achieve by making the railroad an actual railroad. The rest of the book seemed pretty true to history, so it felt like a bit of a distraction, like if he'd otherwise told a believable story and made one of the characters an alien. It just felt unnecessary and didn't - to my mind - serve any real literary purpose. I've not read any other books by him, so maybe I simply lack the broader context of how he approaches his work. It was definitely a thought provoking read, but it wasn't quick and I can't say it was "enjoyable." Maybe the best word for it is necessary?
I needed more about the railroad.
This is another one of those big prize winning books that I just don't get. This one feels like it has been written by a student at school for their history lesson, there are some terrible lines, things like "the necklace of ears was worn round his neck" no way! a necklace worn round the neck, who'd have guessed the crazy stuff they got up to in the olden times before Facebook. I can only guess that that some bribery was done to get this included on the shortlist.
The story itself was dull for most of the time, I found myself wanting to skip ahead, luckily I stuck at it and got to read some of the really good parts of the story, finding out about Mabel was probably the best part.
I was thinking that maybe this was gonna be another To the Lighthouse book, luckily it was …
This is another one of those big prize winning books that I just don't get. This one feels like it has been written by a student at school for their history lesson, there are some terrible lines, things like "the necklace of ears was worn round his neck" no way! a necklace worn round the neck, who'd have guessed the crazy stuff they got up to in the olden times before Facebook. I can only guess that that some bribery was done to get this included on the shortlist.
The story itself was dull for most of the time, I found myself wanting to skip ahead, luckily I stuck at it and got to read some of the really good parts of the story, finding out about Mabel was probably the best part.
I was thinking that maybe this was gonna be another To the Lighthouse book, luckily it was saved by the arrival of an actual Underground Railroad. woooo
Interesting ideal for a story but boringly executed, I wouldn't recommend this one. 2.5 stars.
I wasn’t sure i wanted to read another book about slavery in the US, but i am glad i read this one.
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It took me a little while to get into the rhythm of this book. But Whitehead has a genius for capturing broad swathes of the underbelly of American racial history and dynamics in a few short strokes of a vignette or a character portrait. His short, pointed chapter on the white character, Ethel, for example, is absolutely, damningly ingenious: "Ever since she saw a woodcut of a missionary surrounded by jungle natives, Ethel thought it would be spiritually fulfilling to serve the Lord in dark Africa, delivering savages to the light."
There were some really good parts, some good thoughts, there were winding parts and towards the end it was all over the place. What annoyed me most was how the underground railroad as an actual train introduced this magical realism element that totally didn't match the rest. Sure I can see what it was intended to be, but it just didn't work for me. There were too many things that didn't end up as a cohesive book, while the main storyline on its own would have been way stronger.
