Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

 

This is listed as a novel but it's really more like three sequential novellas, the time skips between them make it hard for me to pitch this thing as a really cohesive novel. The novellas are really, really good, and there are things about Harlem and the Black experience there (and arguably elsewhere in America, though NYC is very much the focus). I'm not a huge fan of stories about low-level crooks way out of their criminal depth, and that's kinda what these novellas all are--though to be fair it's the main's cousin who keeps doing the really ill-considered things. While Harlem is the canvas for this novel and street-level crime is the paint, I think family is really the main subject, here: Not only is the main doing progressively more desperate things to try to protect his cousin, he's also working to make a life for his family as the neighborhoods he knows are basically ripped out from under him (and of course as much of the legal and social and governmental structure is substantially tilted against him). Obviously the racism of that parenthetical is also an important layer of what's going on, here, and it's both personal and systemic. Whitehead's actual writing is a joy, his voice dances and sings and growls and screams as needed. I am really happy to have read this book.