Gleaming ... Can’t help but impart a nostalgic vibe, too. This isn’t because Whitehead’s prose is autumnal or tamped down but because the reader realizes that this is our last time around the block with this memorable set of misfits and nonconformists ... The cultural commentary is playful and urbane ... Most saliently, this is a heavyweight New York novel. Whitehead cracks the city open like a crab and pulls out the meat.
Whitehead repurposes ready-made narratives to explore underrepresented areas of Black experience; he consistently commits to the bit and then twists it, finding emotional resonances where you’d least expect them ... Whitehead celebrates, in deliberately unsentimental fashion, the variety of Black ingenuity and splendor on offer in marginalized circles ... Sophisticated.
A dizzyingly brilliant measure of the versatility and depth of the acclaimed author’s literary talent ... The intricacy with which Whitehead details the planning and execution of this caper marks him as a top-tier researcher — he’s drawn on many primary sources to ground this work of fiction in historical fact ... A modern masterpiece and an ode to New York, no matter that rats skitter and cockroaches scamper underfoot.
