Hosted, as always, by Rebecca at Bookish Beck, posting on the last Monday of every month. There’s no set formula to this; you can post anything about libraries, whether you’ve recently been to an event at one, heard about an initiative at one, whatever! I use it for rundowns of my monthly library reading. Join in on your social media space of choice using #LoveYourLibrary.
June has been a relatively quiet month on the library front, although I did source three of my 20 Books of Summer this month from libraries. Other than that, I only have two titles to report, both of which are by the same author.
Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead (2021): I found this hugely compelling while I was reading it: a tripartite crime novel—it’s almost three connected novellas, really—set over five crucial years in Harlem, 1959-1964. Furniture salesman Ray Carney starts out only a little crooked, occasionally offloading secondhand goods of unclear and unclarified provenance, but he becomes a serious fence when his cousin Freddie gets him involved with a harebrained plan to knock over the Hotel Theresa, Harlem’s Ritz-Carlton. It all unfolds from there. The colourism and snobbery of the drive towards Black bourgeois-dom (made manifest in Carney’s in-laws), the weight of his past as the son of a notorious criminal and his sense of responsibility for Freddie, all clash with the growing civil rights movement and its two faces, “respectable” and “riotous” (entertainingly complained about by Black élites in terms almost identical to those used in liberal circles about student protest movements today). Whitehead’s tendency to drop you in medias res is more exciting than frustrating, and the action scenes are tense and funny; imagine Chester Himes with a stronger historical perspective. His minor characters are also great: I loved Pepper, a taciturn, gravel-eyed man who ends up as Carney’s surveillance and backup guy. Not sure about the women: wife Elizabeth is a bit of a cipher, mother-in-law Alma a shrew, secretary Marie a purveyor of baked goods. And oddly, although I reserved the sequel almost immediately, I’m not sure Harlem Shuffle has the weight to stick in the mind six months hence. We’ll have to find out. Meanwhile, it’s nice to see Whitehead cutting loose a little.
Crook Manifesto, by Colson Whitehead (2023): The aforementioned sequel. Carney went straight for a while there, but in 1971 his teenage daughter May urgently needs Jackson Five tickets, so he hits up a crooked detective of former acquaintance, Munson, and again, it all goes from there. Same triple structure, which made me think of Whitehead’s Harlem books in the tradition of episodic crime drama or police procedural; each of the three stories that make up Crook Manifesto could easily have unfolded, origami-like, to a full novel all on its own. In the second, Pepper returns—it’s a delight to have him back in the foreground, he feels like an old friend—to find out where the actress in a locally-shot blaxploitation flick has disappeared off to. (It turns out she’s absolutely fine, but in trying to investigate, Pepper opens other cans of worms.) In the third, a child whose mother rents an apartment from Carney (who has bought the buildings where his furniture store is located, and therefore has tenants) is injured in a fire that was probably arson, one of the many insurance scams or city-redevelopment-loan grifts being run on Harlem in the late ’70s, and Carney would like to know on whose orders the fire was set. The answer takes us back to the closing chapters of Harlem Shuffle, which also pointed to downtown (aka city hall) as the location of those who really know how to score big. Vengeance is wreaked on the snooty bourgeois symbolised by the Dumas Club, but there’s a hollow feeling to it, a sense that something significant is being eroded out of Harlem. Female characters fare absolutely no better this time around (with the possible exception of Viola Lewis, a chicken-shop owner who gets a fantastic and totally throw-away flashback in which she hires Pepper to crack the safe containing the secret recipe of the chicken shop across the way). Once again, though, Whitehead writes with verve, glee, and extreme skill; a reader can easily relax and sink into this world. He has confirmed this will be a trilogy, and I can’t wait for book three.
Have you read any library loans this month?
Elle Thinks 
I haven’t read anything from the library yet, though I do have something on hold I should be collecting tomorrow…. 🤣
Ooh, exciting! What is it?
Johnson is Leaving by John Wain (Samuel, that is…)
That sounds very niche but intriguing!
I’ve read the two previous by Whitehead, The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, and didn’t particularly care for them, the former because the alternative history and anachronism didn’t seem like enough to distinguish it from so many other tales of enslavement and the latter because I don’t like books that turn on a trick. Have you read James McBride? I’d be interested to hear how you think he compares.
I preferred both of the Harlem novels to The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, for precisely the reasons that you mention. I haven’t read James McBride but am aware of him and think I probably should try him; The Good Lord Bird appeals the most, of his titles that I know of.
I’ve read The Good Lord Bird and his memoir, and loved them! I keep meaning to read him again. Probably The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store since my library owns it.
For some reason that one hasn’t called my name (I think the title has been striking me as overly twee), but I’d be keen to hear your thoughts.
It’s by far his most read book (according to Goodreads), which I’m going to attribute to the Obama effect!
I liked Harlem Shuffle too (especially the ending), and I’m glad to hear you rated the second too. I’ve been meaning to get to it, but, well, you know how it goes… I haven’t read much other Whitehead, but I remember his debut, The Intuitionist, as being terrific.
You’ll like Crook Manifesto too, once you do get round to it. I’d love to read The Intuitionist. I’ve actually read quite a lot of Whitehead’s stuff now: these two plus The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys, and John Henry Days. Tried to read Zone One (the zombie novel) a few years ago and couldn’t get into it, but I’m confident that was a timing issue, and would like to try again. Of those, I think the Harlem novels are actually probably his best on a craft/execution level.
Interesting! I definitely sensed he was having fun writing the book, despite the big issues it reflects on. Maybe that contributed to its artistic success?
That would make sense. It feels like he’s allowing himself to loosen up a little after the two Very Serious Pulitzer Winners.
I loved The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys but I’ve been wary of these ones and I can’t quite put my finger on why. I think it’s a combination of bouncing hard off one of Whitehead’s earlier novels (Zone One) and the time period/setting. Episodic doesn’t sell it to me either, but I should probably check out a sample to suss them out further.
It took me a long time to decide I was interested in trying one, which I think was down to the fact that I couldn’t quite work out what they were about. The episodes are long—it’s a Part One, Part Two, Part Three kind of thing, with multiple chapters in each part—if that makes it any better. I like that it’s crime-adjacent but not a by-the-numbers crime novel, and I like the atmosphere Whitehead captures a lot. There’s a huge amount in this about social mobility and respectability, but he wears the research he must have done lightly.
They do sound a little bit like Nicola Griffith’s Aud novels which obviously is a massive plus!
I recall listening to an abridged audio of Harlem Shuffle on Radio 4 and enjoying it enormously. The dialogue and excellent characterisation have stayed with me, which doesn’t always happen with audio readings. Now you’ve got me thinking about the sequel, too…