RaveThe Irish Times (UK)... the personal narrative here is so thoroughly connected to the political that Whitehead seems to have created a new paradigm for the roman-a-clef ... The frank brutality of the book is all the more startling when we remember how many real-life victims of racial prejudice have been children ... Whitehead is clearly a natural storyteller. The Nickel Boys unspools itself as effortlessly as a Richard Yates novel and at each point feels as devastatingly real. The language is controlled, laconic and detailed. Whitehead triggers the senses with small verbal cues here and there so that we can almost smell the leather of the Plymouth Elwood is arrested in ... Whitehead also has an uncanny ability to visualise the landscapes that accompany these moments of tension. His naturalism is reminiscent of Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, often evoking both horror and beauty in one fell swoop ... a book which can be applied and reapplied because its themes are so thoroughly universal ... when the final turn does come in the book, we are forced once again into confronting the politics of forgetting. Which is why issues such as racial inequality continue to exist. Which is why Whitehead’s writing will continue to endure.
