Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead 2021

Colson Whitehead, a 1991 graduate of Harvard, has written 8 novels and at the age of 52 has accumulated an impressive list of awards: National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize for the Underground Railroad, another Pulitzer Prize for The Nickel Boys, a Whiting Award, and a MacArthur fellowship.  He also writes a column for the New York Times and has taught at an intriguing variety of universities including U. of Wyoming!

This book, as expected from his resume, is quite wonderful.  Written in the noir style of Raymond Chandler’s hard-bitten private eyes but with the literary depth of a Bellow, Mailer, or Roth, it’s a terrific tale about a man living in 1959-1964 Harlem trying to make a living from a furniture store while earning much needed cash as a fence.  He has a family whom he loves and seeks to protect while he battles his background of crime, poverty, and motherlessness.  The character, Raymond Carney is wonderfully wrought and as a sign of how good this novel is, I couldn’t keep his situation out of my mind over the week in which I read this book.  Other characters are just as vivid: cousin Freddie, Aunt Millie, the downtown jewel fence Moskowitz, the heavy protection criminal Pepper, the Van Wyck’s, and on and on—-a simply wonderful cast of characters.

A fine read and a good reason to keep reading Whitehead’s oeuvre.