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The Underground Railroad: A Novel Paperback – January 30, 2016
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Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him.
In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop.
As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation, from the brutal abduction of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondage—and a powerful meditation on the history we all share.
Look for Colson Whitehead’s bestselling new novel, Harlem Shuffle!
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAnchor
- Publication dateJanuary 30, 2016
- Dimensions5.13 x 0.69 x 7.95 inches
- ISBN-100345804325
- ISBN-13978-0345804327
- Lexile measure890L
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Terrific.” —Barack Obama
“An American masterpiece.” —NPR
“Stunningly daring.” —The New York Times Book Review
"A triumph." —The Washington Post
“Potent. . . . Devastating. . . . Essential.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“Whitehead's best work and an important American novel.” —The Boston Globe
“Electrifying. . . . Tense, graphic, uplifting and informed, this is a story to share and remember.” —People
“Heart-stopping.” —Oprah Winfrey
“The Underground Railroad is inquiring into the very soul of American democracy. . . . A stirring exploration of the American experiment.” —The Wall Street Journal
“A brilliant reimagining of antebellum America.” —The New Republic
“Colson Whitehead’s book blends the fanciful and the horrific, the deeply emotional and the coolly intellectual. Whathe comes up with is an American masterpiece.” —Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto
“The Underground Railroad enters the pantheon of . . . the Great American Novels. . . . A wonderful reminder of whatgreat literature is supposed to do: open our eyes, challengeus, and leave us changed by the end.” —Esquire
“[Whitehead] is the best living American novelist.” —Chicago Tribune
“Masterful, urgent. . . . One of the finest novels written aboutour country’s still unabsolved original sin.” —USA Today
“Brilliant. . . . An instant classic that makes vivid the darkest, most horrific corners of America’s history of brutality against black people.” —HuffPost
“Singular, utterly riveting. . . . You’ll be shaken and stunned by Whitehead’s imaginative brilliance. . . . The Underground Railroad is a book both timeless and timely. It is a book for now; it is a book that is necessary.” —BuzzFeed
“Whitehead is a writer of extraordinary stylistic powers. . . . [The Underground Railroad] offers many testaments to Whitehead’s considerable talents and examines a deeply relevant and disturbing period of American history.” —The Christian Science Monitor
“[An] ingenious novel. . . . A successful amalgam: a realistically imagined slave narrative and a crafty allegory; a tense adventure tale and a meditation on America’s defining values.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Whitehead’s novel unflinchingly turns our attention to the foundations of the America we know now.” —Elle
“Perfectly balances the realism of its subject with fabulist touches that render it freshly illuminating.” —Time
“I haven’t been as simultaneously moved and entertained bya book for many years. This is a luminous, furious, wildly inventive tale that not only shines a bright light on one of the darkest periods of history, but also opens up thrilling new vistas for the form of the novel itself.” —Alex Preston, The Guardian
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no.
This was her grandmother talking. Cora’s grandmother had never seen the ocean before that bright afternoon in the port of Ouidah and the water dazzled after her time in the fort’s dungeon. The dungeon stored them until the ships arrived. Dahomeyan raiders kidnapped the men first, then returned to her village the next moon for the women and children, marching them in chains to the sea two by two. As she stared into the black doorway, Ajarry thought she’d be reunited with her father, down there in the dark. The survivors from her village told her that when her father couldn’t keep the pace of the long march, the slavers stove in his head and left his body by the trail. Her mother had died years before.
Cora’s grandmother was sold a few times on the trek to the fort, passed between slavers for cowrie shells and glass beads. It was hard to say how much they paid for her in Ouidah as she was part of a bulk purchase, eighty-eight human souls for sixty crates of rum and gunpowder, the price arrived upon after the standard haggling in Coast English. Able-bodied men and childbearing women fetched more than juveniles, making an individual accounting difficult.
The Nanny was out of Liverpool and had made two previous stops along the Gold Coast. The captain staggered his purchases, rather than find himself with cargo of singular culture and disposition. Who knew what brand of mutiny his captives might cook up if they shared a common tongue. This was the ship’s final port of call before they crossed the Atlantic. Two yellow-haired sailors rowed Ajarry out to the ship, humming. White skin like bone.
The noxious air of the hold, the gloom of confinement, and the screams of those shackled to her contrived to drive Ajarry to madness. Because of her tender age, her captors did not immediately force their urges upon her, but eventually some of the more seasoned mates dragged her from the hold six weeks into the passage. She twice tried to kill herself on the voyage to America, once by denying herself food and then again by drowning. The sailors stymied her both times, versed in the schemes and inclinations of chattel. Ajarry didn’t even make it to the gunwale when she tried to jump overboard. Her simpering posture and piteous aspect, recognizable from thousands of slaves before her, betrayed her intentions. Chained head to toe, head to toe, in exponential misery.
Although they had tried not to get separated at the auction in Ouidah, the rest of her family was purchased by Portuguese traders from the frigate Vivilia, next seen four months later drifting ten miles off Bermuda. Plague had claimed all on board. Authorities lit the ship on fire and watched her crackle and sink. Cora’s grandmother knew nothing about the ship’s fate. For the rest of her life she imagined her cousins worked for kind and generous masters up north, engaged in more forgiving trades than her own, weaving or spinning, nothing in the fields. In her stories, Isay and Sidoo and the rest somehow bought their way out of bondage and lived as free men and women in the City of Pennsylvania, a place she had overheard two white men discuss once. These fantasies gave Ajarry comfort when her burdens were such to splinter her into a thousand pieces.
The next time Cora’s grandmother was sold was after a month in the pest house on Sullivan’s Island, once the physicians certified her and the rest of the Nanny’s cargo clear of illness. Another busy day on the Exchange. A big auction always drew a colorful crowd. Traders and procurers from up and down the coast converged on Charleston, checking the merchandise’s eyes and joints and spines, wary of venereal distemper and other afflictions. Onlookers chewed fresh oysters and hot corn as the auctioneers shouted into the air. The slaves stood naked on the platform. There was a bidding war over a group of Ashanti studs, those Africans of renowned industry and musculature, and the foreman of a limestone quarry bought a bunch of pickaninnies in an astounding bargain. Cora’s grandmother saw a little boy among the gawkers eating rock candy and wondered what he was putting in his mouth.
Just before sunset an agent bought her for two hundred and twenty-six dollars. She would have fetched more but for that season’s glut of young girls. His suit was made of the whitest cloth she had ever seen. Rings set with colored stone flashed on his fingers. When he pinched her breasts to see if she was in flower, the metal was cool on her skin. She was branded, not for the first or last time, and fettered to the rest of the day’s acquisitions. The coffle began their long march south that night, staggering behind the trader’s buggy. The Nanny by that time was en route back to Liverpool, full of sugar and tobacco. There were fewer screams belowdecks.
You would have thought Cora’s grandmother cursed, so many times was she sold and swapped and resold over the next few years. Her owners came to ruin with startling frequency. Her first master got swindled by a man who sold a device that cleaned cotton twice as fast as Whitney’s gin. The diagrams were convincing, but in the end Ajarry was another asset liquidated by order of the magistrate. She went for two hundred and eighteen dollars in a hasty exchange, a drop in price occasioned by the realities of the local market. Another owner expired from dropsy, whereupon his widow held an estate sale to fund a return to her native Europe, where it was clean. Ajarry spent three months as the property of a Welshman who eventually lost her, three other slaves, and two hogs in a game of whist. And so on.
Her price fluctuated. When you are sold that many times, the world is teaching you to pay attention. She learned to quickly adjust to the new plantations, sorting the nigger breakers from the merely cruel, the layabouts from the hardworking, the informers from the secret-keepers. Masters and mistresses in degrees of wickedness, estates of disparate means and ambition. Sometimes the planters wanted nothing more than to make a humble living, and then there were men and women who wanted to own the world, as if it were a matter of the proper acreage. Two hundred and forty-eight, two hundred and sixty, two hundred and seventy dollars. Wherever she went it was sugar and indigo, except for a stint folding tobacco leaves for one week before she was sold again. The trader called upon the tobacco plantation looking for slaves of breeding age, preferably with all their teeth and of pliable disposition. She was a woman now. Off she went.
She knew that the white man’s scientists peered beneath things to understand how they worked. The movement of the stars across the night, the cooperation of humors in the blood. The temperature requirements for a healthy cotton harvest. Ajarry made a science of her own black body and accumulated observations. Each thing had a value and as the value changed, everything else changed also. A broken calabash was worth less than one that held its water, a hook that kept its catfish more prized than one that relinquished its bait. In America the quirk was that people were things. Best to cut your losses on an old man who won’t survive a trip across the ocean. A young buck from strong tribal stock got customers into a froth. A slave girl squeezing out pups was like a mint, money that bred money. If you were a thing—a cart or a horse or a slave—your value determined your possibilities. She minded her place.
Finally, Georgia. A representative of the Randall plantation bought her for two hundred and ninety-two dollars, in spite of the new blankness behind her eyes, which made her look simpleminded. She never drew a breath off Randall land for the rest of her life. She was home, on this island in sight of nothing.
Cora’s grandmother took a husband three times. She had a predilection for broad shoulders and big hands, as did Old Randall, although the master and his slave had different sorts of labor in mind. The two plantations were well-stocked, ninety head of nigger on the northern half and eighty-five head on the southern half. Ajarry generally had her pick. When she didn’t, she was patient.
Her first husband developed a hankering for corn whiskey and started using his big hands to make big fists. Ajarry wasn’t sad to see him disappear down the road when they sold him to a sugarcane estate in Florida. She next took up with one of the sweet boys from the southern half. Before he passed from cholera he liked to share stories from the Bible, his former master being more liberal-minded when it came to slaves and religion. She enjoyed the stories and parables and supposed that white men had a point: Talk of salvation could give an African ideas. Poor sons of Ham. Her last husband had his ears bored for stealing honey. The wounds gave up pus until he wasted away.
Ajarry bore five children by those men, each delivered in the same spot on the planks of the cabin, which she pointed to when they misstepped. That’s where you came from and where I’ll put you back if you don’t listen. Teach them to obey her and maybe they’ll obey all the masters to come and they will survive. Two died miserably of fever. One boy cut his foot while playing on a rusted plow, which poisoned his blood. Her youngest never woke up after a boss hit him in the head with a wooden block. One after another. At least they were never sold off, an older woman told Ajarry. Which was true—back then Randall rarely sold the little ones. You knew where and how your children would die. The child that lived past the age of ten was Cora’s mother, Mabel.
Ajarry died in the cotton, the bolls bobbing around her like whitecaps on the brute ocean. The last of her village, keeled over in the rows from a knot in her brain, blood pouring from her nose and white froth covering her lips. As if it could have been anywhere else. Liberty was reserved for other people, for the citizens of the City of Pennsylvania bustling a thousand miles to the north. Since the night she was kidnapped she had been appraised and reappraised, each day waking upon the pan of a new scale. Know your value and you know your place in the order. To escape the boundary of the plantation was to escape the fundamental principles of your existence: impossible.
It was her grandmother talking that Sunday evening when Caesar approached Cora about the underground railroad, and she said no.
Three weeks later she said yes.
This time it was her mother talking.
Georgia
v
THIRTY DOLLAR REWARD
Ran away from the subscriber, living in Salisbury, on the 5th instant, a negro girl by the name of LIZZIE. It is supposed that said girl is in the vicinity of Mrs. Steel’s plantation. I will give the above reward on the delivery of the girl, or for information on her being lodged in any Gaol in this state. All persons are forewarned of harboring said girl, under penalty of law prescribed.
W. M. DIXON
July 18, 1820
v
Jockey’s birthday only came once or twice a year. They tried to make a proper celebration. It was always Sunday, their half day. At three o’clock the bosses signaled the end of work and the northern plantation scurried to prepare, rushing through chores. Mending, scavenging moss, patching the leak in the roof. The feast took precedence, unless you had a pass to go into town to sell crafts or had hired yourself out for day labor. Even if you were inclined to forgo the extra wages—and no one was so inclined—impossible was the slave impudent enough to tell a white man he couldn’t work because it was a slave’s birthday. Everybody knew niggers didn’t have birthdays.
Cora sat by the edge of her plot on her block of sugar maple and worked dirt from under her fingernails. When she could, Cora contributed turnips or greens to the birthday feasts, but nothing was coming in today. Someone shouted down the alley, one of the new boys most likely, not completely broken in by Connelly yet, and the shouts cracked open into a dispute. The voices more crotchety than angry, but loud. It was going to be a memorable birthday if folks were already this riled.
“If you could pick your birthday, what would it be?” Lovey asked.
Cora couldn’t see Lovey’s face for the sun behind her, but she knew her friend’s expression. Lovey was uncomplicated, and there was going to be a celebration that night. Lovey gloried in these rare escapes, whether it was Jockey’s birthday, Christmas, or one of the harvest nights when everyone with two hands stayed up picking and the Randalls had the bosses distribute corn whiskey to keep them happy. It was work, but the moon made it okay. The girl was the first to tell the fiddler to get busy and the first to dance. She’d try to pull Cora from the sidelines, ignoring her protestations. As if they’d twirl in circles, arm in arm, with Lovey catching a boy’s eyes for a second on every revolution and Cora following suit. But Cora never joined her, tugging her arm away. She watched.
“Told you when I was born,” Cora said. She was born in winter. Her mother, Mabel, had complained enough about her hard delivery, the rare frost that morning, the wind howling between the seams in the cabin. How her mother bled for days and Connelly didn’t bother to call the doctor until she looked half a ghost. Occasionally Cora’s mind tricked her and she’d turn the story into one of her memories, inserting the faces of ghosts, all the slave dead, who looked down at her with love and indulgence. Even people she hated, the ones who kicked her or stole her food once her mother was gone.
“If you could pick,” Lovey said.
“Can’t pick,” Cora said. “It’s decided for you.”
“You best fix your mood,” Lovey said. She sped off.
Cora kneaded her calves, grateful for the time off her feet. Feast or no feast, this was where Cora ended up every Sunday when their half day of work was done: perched on her seat, looking for things to fix. She owned herself for a few hours every week was how she looked at it, to tug weeds, pluck caterpillars, thin out the sour greens, and glare at anyone planning incursions on her territory.
Product details
- Publisher : Anchor; Reprint edition (January 30, 2016)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0345804325
- ISBN-13 : 978-0345804327
- Lexile measure : 890L
- Item Weight : 8.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.13 x 0.69 x 7.95 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,264 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Colson Whitehead is the author eight novels and two works on non-fiction, including The Underground Railroad, which received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Carnegie Medal, the Heartland Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Hurston-Wright Award, and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. The novel is being adapted by Barry Jenkins into a TV series for Amazon. Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys received the Pulitzer Prize, The Kirkus Prize, and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.
A recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship, he lives in New York City.
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When I say it is different, I hesitate: It is, in many ways, a tale of the deplorable conditions of slavery that are all too familiar. The difference is the absolute bleakness with which Whitehead overwhelms the reader in a setting that gives birth to both his narrative and the psyches of his characters. Largely told through the limited third person perspective of the protagonist Cora (though other characters’ perspectives are also employed), the bleakness of her and her people’s lot emanates from the pages: bleak circumstances, little hope, and only momentary rests in a landscape rife with violence, danger, hate, and darkness. Indeed, Cora’s notion that the world seemed “As if… there were no places to escape to, only places to flee” is a notion the reader retains throughout this work.
What Whitehead has done is recreate a landscape similar to the one found in Zone One, a zombie tale that, like the novel reviewed herein, defies the conventions of its genre. The barren and bleak wasteland containing the possibility of danger at every turn, with only moments of rest in between episodes of danger, is reminiscent of The Underground Railroad. Such a world is expected in a zombie tale, and yes, dangers were possible at every turn for escaped slaves, but Whitehead brings them to life so masterfully that it is sometimes gut wrenching to turn the pages. Just as in Zone One, we know any respite or peace found in The Underground Railroad is, as its main characters also are, in constant danger. “Sometimes a slave will be lost in a brief eddy of liberation,” the narrator remarks, and time and again, the reader gets lost in the same reverie, only for the ugly horror looming in the background to intrude upon both the characters’ and the reader’s respite.
Whitehead’s prose is refreshing in its descriptiveness. His focus on darkness, blackness, and barrenness in many of his scenes adds to the suspenseful effect of ever-present danger. His haunting description of burned fields and mountains in Tennessee is among the most vivid and undeniably memorable of the novel. The biggest complaint by negative reviewers on Amazon is that it is “poorly written,” mostly referring to Whitehead’s tendency to use sentence fragments within his prose, yet these are typically well-placed and rhythmical, adding a verse-like effect and sometimes adding the effect of fragmentation of thoughts, speech, etc. Human beings often think and speak in fragments, and these seem fitting for Whitehead’s chosen point-of-view, making his characters more authentic. The technique also emphasizes the fragmented society about which he writes. In short, everything Whitehead does works together masterfully towards a single effect even Poe would admire, and the chilling horror in the aforementioned mountainside scenes even rivals Poe’s masterful descriptive powers.
There is yet another similarity to Zone One: the idea of “otherness.” In Zone One, Whitehead “challenges readers to think about how we dehumanize others, how society tramples and consumes individuals, and how vulnerable we all are" (from the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Vol. 2, "The Contemporary Period.) The Lieutenant, a character in Zone One, says of zombies, “Mustn’t humanize them. The whole thing breaks down unless you are fundamentally sure that they are not you." Clearly the whites depicted in The Underground Railroad, save the ones involved with the railroad itself, had applied that logic to African Americans. Accepting such a lie not only condones but also encourages the horrific violence Whitehead describes, violence with an unfortunate historical basis.
In short, The Underground Railroad is a contemporary masterpiece. Whitehead’s “Acknowledgements” section references several works to which he feels indebted; it is doubtless that he could have added hundreds more. While indebted to slave narratives, Whitehead has the ability to describe the realities of slavery with its ugly and naked truths woven into a nightmarish reality that is perhaps closer to depicting the psyche of enslaved men and women who longed for freedom than those primary sources whose audience shaped their purpose and limited their range of expression. Whitehead resists employing flowery prose and cliche figures of speech to attempt to depict what his setting, a claustrophobic nightmare characterized by darkness and ugliness and dotted with people just as ugly, does for him. The story is breathed forth from this setting almost effortlessly.
To call this a bleak book without hope, though, would be misguided. At one point, during an exploration of a library, Cora finds many stories of her people, “the stories of all the colored people she had ever known, the stories of black people yet to be born, the foundations of their triumphs.” The Underground Railroad is an important and significant contribution to these stories of the African American experience -- a story of struggles and triumphs, nightmares and dreams, hopes and fears. The Underground Railroad, like numerous other important African American works, makes room for hope and endurance in the midst of adversity and a universe that, though it may indifferently overwhelm its inhabitants, is still one in which we must live.
Throughout Cora’s adventure through the south, Whitehead does a fantastic job at keeping the reader entertained while still providing them with information about the life of a slave in the south. A great aspect of the novel is that Whitehead uses a third person limited point of view. The point of view results in very thorough, deep explanations of Cora’s encounters in the south. In addition, the point of view means that the reader is always in tune with Cora's emotions and physical condition, allowing them to be in Cora’s shoes while also knowing what is going on in the rest of the world.
A shortcoming of the novel is related to how fiction is depicted by Whitehead. Some events in the novel simply feel too superhuman and end up taking away from Cora’s character and blur some nonfiction details. The ending specifically was very confusing as to factual versus fictional events.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in a unique point of view on the issue of slavery in the south during the mid 1800s. Whitehead’s writing allows the novel to be a page-turner while also exhibiting reality.
–Ronakk
C olson Whitehead’s “Underground Railroad” is a story of the dark side of history – slavery, the costs people had to pay for being “alive,” the longing for freedom of those who imagined this possibility, and eventually of escape from the South northward to freedom of one’s dreams. The underground railroad in the novel is an actual one, a real path to one’s liberation from the chains of slavery. Established by the white activists, risking their own and their families’ lives in the name of their beliefs.
The main axis is the escape of the two protagonists Cora and her friend from the plantation Ceaser for the North by underground railroad. Desperate for freedom and quality of life they decide to take their future into their own hands. Well, at least regarding the making of the decision.
Their path to freedom turns out to be rather a bumpy one. Following the protagonists, we encounter, as they do, all the horrific, humiliating and terrifying reality of those times. Further, Whitehead interposes in their journey passages about Cora’s grandmother Ajarry who was brought to America on the ship with other slaves. He begins with portraying the context and the impotence of enslaved to find their way out of it. First, by erasing their identity and heritage, they could have brought to American soil.
THEY HAD BEEN STOLEN FROM VILLAGES ALL OVER AFRICA AND SPOKE A MULTITUDE OF TONGUES. THE WORDS FROM ACROSS THE OCEAN WERE BEATEN OUT OF THEM OVER TIME. FOR SIMPLICITY, TO ERASE THEIR IDENTITIES, TO SMOOTHER UPRISINGS.
Those raised already in the slavery don’t know any other world. They were born into the white men’s world. Since they are illiterate, with no other heritage than slavery and subjection to the white race, that obviously (in their views) is the superior one, the plantation was the only known world. The world where the rules and boundaries are more than clear and probably, regardless of how ridiculous it might sound, thus the only “comfort zone” to live.
KNOW YOUR VALUE AND YOU KNOW YOUR PLACE IN THE ORDER. TO ESCAPE THE BOUNDARY OF THE PLANTATION WAS TO ESCAPE THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF YOUR EXISTENCE: IMPOSSIBLE.
Since the characters of Whitehead’s novel, at least most of them, have no other experiences outside the plantation, no knowledge of words, have never made any significant decisions in their lives they naturally become incapacitated, incapable of not only making any change but even thinking of it.
“I CAN’T DECIDE FOR MYSELF,” CORA SAID. “WHY CAN’T THEY? ON THE PLANTATION, MASTER DECIDED EVERYTHING FOR US. …”
Cora and Ceaser while moving northward with the underground railroad, eventually become aware of how deceptive is their liberation. On the one hand, as a result of Ridgeway, slaves hunter, desperate to seize the two fugitives, following their every step. On the other, by confronting with the dissonance of their vision of what they would encounter on their way to the North with the reality they have to face: racism, hatred, disgust with black people and in a result brutal and barbarian murders. Whitehead portrays the brutality with a precision giving us all the horror and repugnance that the events could arouse in us.
The endeavor for freedom seems to be in the novel unattainable for the protagonists. Wherever they go and try to settle within the groups or communities that are in favor of equality, they eventually have to leave and start their chase for freedom once again. There is always some tension, some boundaries that make their liberation quite illusory.
“AND AMERICA, TOO, IS A DELUSION, THE GRANDEST ONE OF ALL. THE WHITE RACE BELIEVES – BELIEVES WITH ALL ITS HEART – THAT IT IS THEIR RIGHT TO TAKE THE LAND. TO KILL INDIANS. MAKE WAR. ENSLAVE THEIR BROTHER. THIS NATION SHOULDN’T EXIST, IF THERE IS ANY JUSTICE IN THE WORLD, FOR ITS FOUNDATIONS ARE MURDER, THEFT, AND CRUELTY. YET HERE WE ARE.”
“The Underground Railroad” takes on fundamental issues that have never been dealt appropriately. As I see it, it is crucial nowadays to dedicate literary novels to matters that are critical in our history. We all shall learn a lesson from stories like this one, told by Colson Whitehead. Although I find this novel of a great importance there is this thought that I had, reading the book, that I couldn’t stop thinking about. Is “The Underground Railroad” honestly that good as almost everyone praise? Is it that innovative and literary master crafted?
As far as I am concerned, no, it’s not. When I was reading it, I couldn’t help myself thinking “well, I’ve already read that.” Obviously, one can say that there is nothing wrong about it. Eventually, that’s how it all happened. Thus you can’t rewrite the events. However, as I see it, it’s rather a case of how you portray those events. I found the novel quite schematic and repetitive concerning the states of characters, the problems and the emotions Whitehead presents. Then again, it’s more about how you do it than what you do. Let me invoke here just three great novels for my argument.
First, “The Known Wolrd” by Edward P. Jones, who amazingly portrays the longing for freedom, the absurdity of slavery as well as its brutality. When I read the first part of Whitehead’s novel, I had in my mind pictures that rendered from Jones’ book and honestly couldn’t resist thinking that the latter one is much more emotional, innovative regarding the way it represents feelings, characters, and their struggles.
Second, “The Black Boy” by Richard Wright that takes a stance on how important and essential role in one’s freedom plays words and knowledge of them. The book also portrays the journey that the protagonist takes toward freedom in the North of America and how illusory it actually is on the way. Then again, personally, I find Wright’s novel much more credible and sensitive and further, much better regarding literary art.
Third and the last I want to invoke is “Beloved” by Toni Morrison. Most of the reviews say that Whitehead’s novel is so moving, so emotional that you sincerely can’t resist it. It definitely is repulsive concerning all the brutality and horror it describes in the lives of its characters. However, is it honestly as profoundly moving as Morrison’s passages in “Beloved?”
“The Underground Railroad” is a good book, but it’s not, in my opinion, an extraordinary one. Whitehead took on a complicated task – to write a novel that would not only tell the story that has already been told so many times (and I’m not saying too many times!) but would be able to stand in line with some great pieces of literary art like Morrison’s or Wright’s. The way I see it, he did not quite manage to do this.
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Whilst the novel does have literary pretensions, the story ultimately becomes an edge-of-the seat page turning thriller. I can understand why some reviewers found the initial chapters difficult but the book evolves into something that is hugely descriptive and with a sense of danger and menace which permeates the novel like nothing else I have ever read. Whilst the whole concept of an actual underground railway is an elaborate twist on the name given to a network dedicated to rescuing escaped slaves, there is a lot of historical research which has gone in to this book as well as references to later incidents such as the notorious Tuskegee Experiment.
The book is often uncomfortable and there is an underlying and understandable resentment of the racist nature of America and the battles it's black population had to overcome to assert themselves. This is a novel that does not withhold it's punches yet offers up a mirror to American society today. I would have to say that the novel is like a tapestry where the various elements eventually coalesce and you are taken on a journey which is often fascinating, repellent and rewarding depending upon which chapter you are reading. The villains in the piece are repugnant and menacing. Ridgeway is one of the most believable villains I have encountered in a book. Not all the white characters are bad and it is nice to see that things are so nuanced. The detestable Homer is scary because his motives are never really explained. Not sure why a macabre black boy should work for a slave catcher.
I am usually quite negative about American literature. In the past I have been disappointed by writers such as Scot F Fitzgerald who are deemed to represent the "American experience." As a rule, I avoid American writers due to these feelings. Having said this, I would have to say that this book represents exactly how I feel about America. The white characters are especially well drawn in this novel and this appertains to both the liberal characters and racists described within this book. Even those who appear to have good intentions transpire to be misguided.
At the end of the day, what sells this book for me is the fact that you want to talk about it and tell everyone how good it is after you have finished it. It really sticks in your mind, If it has a flaw, it is that there is a sense of foreboding throughout the book which makes you rush through the pages. This means that you sometimes miss the beauty in the language. Deemed a "science fiction " novel, this is somewhat of a miscasting as I feel this is a book that everyone needs to read. This would make a terrific film but I would urge anyone who loves books to pick this novel up and give it a try before it hits the big screen. Thoroughly recommended.

The narrative of Cora's escape across five states becomes a sombre and nuanced exploration of the toxic effect of slavery, especially plantation slavery, on the whole of American society, with figures like Martin and Homer serving to illustrate the diversity of human responses to the enveloping nightmare.
I had a mixed reaction to the magic realism of the railroad and to a lesser extent the South Carolina sequence. It was daring on Whitehead's part, because he ran the risk of destroying his book's credibility. I can understand why some readers abandoned the novel at that point. But on balance I thought it worked, adding an invigorating extra dimension.
The only flaw was the rather muted ending, which lacked the self confidence and panache of the rest of the novel.

366 pages, split into 12 chapters, the titles of which show the progression to The North.
Disappointingly, I found this book to be really hard going. There is no doubt that it is a worthy subject and it is well written but I found it very difficult to connect with anything at all in the novel.
It almost feels shameful to not want to read about the terrors of slavery but it seemed that the author was writing for literary praise without concentrating on engaging with the average reader.
The parallel world was a bit odd and gave the novel a disjointed impression which did not flow well at all. I'm sure there was something deep going on but it passed me by and I won;t recommend this book to anyone else.
This period in American history is unfamiliar to me and I needed more context to be able to place the characters. Here we are thrown into a situation and expected to work everything out which lessened the powerful effect of the story.

The writing is lyrical and poetic and crafted with care and a real sense of artistry. The story is utterly compelling and takes a real grip early on and never lets it's tightness ease. The characters are crafted with care and loving attention and their stories draw massive emotional responses. It's hard to fathom the evil and totality of the Slavery Experience, it's savagery and ruthlessness and the way it pock marked itself so deeply into the culture of The South-and beyond. It's impact reasonates today causing a torrent of complex problems & challenges for modern day America.
This is a bleak read but it also inspires as the central characters try to retain their dignity and Hope in a period of unrelenting primeval savagery.
The pace of the book is fierce and you root for the Slaves. There are one or two moments of exhilaration amidst the despair and murderous culture.
Parts of the book ride a rocky road in trying to stretch the debate between the protagonists and for me the weakest section is in the interchange between the Slave Catcher ,Ridgeway, and Cara. That part just doesn't work.
But it's a rare moment in an otherwise superlative read. This is a simply magnificent book which is beautifully written, imaginatively constructed and powerfully realised.
Highly recommended and one of my Books of the Decade.

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