![]() ![]() Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. It's a measured, calm narration of a life and a family, but with gangsters. Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. ![]() Mortal peril, race riots, seriously nasty criminals, the hot and sweaty streets of Harlem in the 1960s and a furniture salesman who has a hell of a lot going on.Ĭolson Whitehead puts so many beautiful thoughts on each page of his gentle, considered prose and brings New York and its people to glorious life. Ray treads a line between two worlds - that of his life with his respectable wife and their children and that of his past in which he can harness the power of his underworld connections when he needs to. His name is Ray Carney, and he owns a furniture showroom on 125th Street, making rent partially through the resale of used and sometimes stolen goods. Race riots break out when an unarmed Black boy is shot by a white police officer - Whitehead gently explores 'progress' on race-related matters, making observations through Ray, letting the reader come to their own conclusions.įreddie is the character who pushes the plot along – his bond with Ray means they both bear the brunt of his terrible decisions. It’s a casual, beautiful novel, extraordinarily enjoyable, about a mostly legit businessman trying to make it in midcentury Harlem. ![]()
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May 2023
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