Bit of a meandering tale but has points where it’s gripping and a real page turner. It’s can be very tense at times and definitely needs some warnings for the language used. I ended up giving this three stars as it just wasn’t memorable for me

Colson Whitehead is such a prolific writer. He expertly deals with topics that are not always easy nor easily digested. While his previous two novels were hard hitting and emotionally draining at times Harlem Shuffle was to a point, more light hearted and not quite so intense for the reader and I'm sure the author too. Whitehead deals with old Harlem, of the 1950s and 1960- when businesses needed to pay protection and corruption was rife. It showed snobbery and a hunger for importance and power. It gave great insight into Carney and his wish to succeed while abiding by the law, and the struggles that made this almost impossible. It really enjoyed it and look forward already to his next masterpiece.

I would recommend this book to students if English Literature, especially those studying for A Level.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

A disappointing read, to say the least. The author focused on making his writing style flowery, full of irrelevant details, which distracted me from the main story. Sure, this is an interesting story, but is should be told in a totally different way to grab my attention.

I’ve read all of Colson Whitehead’s books, and absolutely had to get this one too. This was a beautifully crafted, multilayered historical fiction, that depicts the hustle and bustle of life in Harlem during the 1950s/1960s. It was a little slow to get going, but I think this is down to my ignorance as to what life was like in Harlem during this period of history. The writing style with this book was different to his usual style, but persevere with it; it’s a fantastic story.

I came across Colson Whitehead’s work a few years back when I had picked up The Underground Railroad. The Pulitzer Prize-winning book turned out to be one of my favorites of that year and this led me to add the author to the auto-buy list. Colson’s next offering Nickel Boys though did not garner as much praise across the reading community, personally, I loved the book and the horrors that it generated which led me to disturbing sleepless nights.


Harlem Shuffle is Colson’s latest offering which talks about a black man’s survival when he has been under the gaze of being discriminated against every so often during the 1960s. We are brought face-to-face with Ray Carney who is not directly involved in large crimes and yet is a little bent (as he calls himself). Ray, to his neighbors and friends in a salesman who deals with second-hand furniture as well as reasonably priced ones. The times are tough for Ray as he needs to manage funds with another kid on his way.

A life-changing experience comes to Ray when he is being handed over diamonds of one of the biggest crime-lord in the town. What follows is a series of events from murders to heist to drug-dealing that turns Ray from being a small-time fence to someone who has grown leaps and bounds in the world of criminals. The book also deals with how a black man finds it much harder to be accepted as a decent human being during those days and the difficulties it posed for them to lead a normal life.

“Crooked world, straight world, same rules – everybody had a hand out for the envelope.”

When I did come across some reviews of the book after I had finished it, some of them did turn out to be accurate in my case. For many who have just read Colson’s Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, they may not find this one as good, especially with the change in genre from tragic drama to crime novel. As with the other books, this one as well revolved around Black men and women and their lives. What posed the main difficulty for me was catching up with the style of writing that takes a lot of time to get used to.


Till the first part of the book ended, I was still looking for a direction on where the book was heading towards. Though one could empathize with the characters, Ray was the only one whose story was well detailed and whose character was one asked to be tagged along too. With the other characters hardly getting much characterization, there were times one finds it difficult to understand Ray’s sentiments.

For the fans of Colson Whitehead, this book would serve to be another cherry on the cake and I’m sure they would love it. For others who haven’t experienced the author’s other works, avoid this one till you pick up any of the author’s other works, and maybe then maybe you would love to get along with the writing.

My Ratings: 3 out of 5 stars

A novel about the inhabitants of a small part of Harlem. The dreams of upward mobility for some, making a quick buck for others but for most it’s about survival. Colson Whitehead delivers another excellent story. Brilliant.

Harlem Shuffle was my first of literary titian @colsonwhitehead ‘s books to read . In short I loved the writing .

Harlem Shuffle follows the path of Ray Carney in 1960’s Harlem New York . Ray the son of crooked man sees himself as going it mostly straight and only a little bent every now and then . Not if his cousin Freddie can help it .

#colsonwhitehead has made the bumpy road of Rays journey an incredibly comfortable ride for the reader. The writing is smooth and easy , you will feel rocked and lulled even as things hit the skids .

Colson Whitehead writes like a natural story teller. I will definitely be adding more of his work to my TBR.

Thank you to @netgalley and @fleetreads for my E-ARC . I picked up a hardback to share with my friends .

⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sadly this book was not for me. The plot was interesting and I was intrigued and interested to finish but the writing style did not suit me and I DNF’d this book around 30% through.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I love The Nickel Boys and still need to read The Underground Railroad. I thought Harlem Shuffle was very good but perhaps did not enjoy it as much as The Nickel Boys.

Set in the late fifties and early sixties in America, this was an interesting take on living in a society impacted by crime. The contrast of Ray's legitimate daytime business and his night-time life of crime created tension and internal conflict. Ray's struggle to cover up what he was doing was interesting.

Overall, well-written and somewhat engaging but this novel didn't win me over. 3.5/5.

Something completely different from Colton Whitehead! This hustle and bustle tale of the organised crime gangs of Harlem is another feather in the author’s cap. At times it feels like a caper, and at others it feels like a hard boiled crime thriller; this fluidity seems to be Whitehead flirting with a breezy authorial style. A great novel that runs along at a fair clip.

I liked the setting of this in 60’s Harlem. We follow Ray Carney and his furniture shop. Ray wants to build a better life for himself and his family by staying on the right side of the law while also slightly dipping into not so quite legal dealings but nothing ever on the level of a heist. However, his dear cousin drags him into one such heist and from then on Carney leads a double life.

Although, I liked the premise of this. I struggled with the first 35% of this book. I had to take a break for a few weeks before finishing this read. The characters and the storyline are great, but I wanted the pace to quicken when things were taking twists and turns and Carney had moral decisions to make. I felt like things that happened in the book actually happened off page and I missed out on the action.

Even though 100% of this book wasn’t for me, I did appreciate the sprinkles of NYC history peppered throughout the pages. I will still be picking up The Underground Railway and Nickel Boys by Whitehead as I had originally planned.

cannot get into this book at all. I struggled with the first couple of chapters then seemed to get a hang on it at all. There is something wrong with the rhythm of the writing. I got to about 30% but I Just cannot make myself read more

Ray Carney owns a furniture shop in Harlem and he doesn’t seem to need much else to be content with his life. He has already a child and his wife Elizabeth is pregnant again, and he’s looking forward to enlarge his family. Nevertheless, family is also the source of all his problems, which come especially in the person of his cousin Freddie. The truth is that Ray has a history of violence and illegal activities, sometimes shared with Freddie. Although he has built a new future for himself and his wife and kids, his past comes back to haunt him and doesn’t leave him alone. Good Ray and bad Ray have still a long way to go before peace can finally come to his life.

I really enjoyed this novel, which is easy to read and hard at the same time. The prose flows, but the story in itself gave me lots of food for thought. Are good intentions enough to free oneself from the place/the family/the education one comes from? Is there a way for a person to atone for the past mistakes and start a new life? Colson Whitehead’s answer is this emotional and vibrant novel, and I totally recommend it.

•thanks to #netgalley and the publisher for the #ARC in exchange for an honest review•

Very enjoyable read following Ray Carney, a decent chap running a furniture store in Harlem in the 60's, with aspirations for a better home for his wife and growing family. He initially tries to stay just the right side of the law but his contacts in the crime world gradually ask more of him and he gets drawn into a darker way of life.
written with warmth and humour, I found I really cared for Ray; though some of his decisions were questionable he always makes them with good intentions.

I wish I liked this book more than I did, but alas. Colson Whitehead is at it again with yet another amazing time in the US - this time in the 50s and 60s of Harlem. We follow Ray Carney who is an entrepreneur, a furniture salesman and also a fence on the side. He's what you call 'just slightly bent' - towing the line between legal and illegal.

This was promised to be a book about a heist and Harlem back its renaissance period and while I have to give it to the author in terms of the brilliant way he's described Harlem back then and it's people, I did think the plot itself felt short. The book felt like a disjointed book in 3 parts which I wish felt more connected to each other. In each part we see a jump in time but I wish it was a little more cohesive.

I did love the character work and the atmosphere. Colson Whitehead has done some great research and it shows. His strength is his character work. I just wish the plot had helped a little more.

Normally I wouldn't read novels about crime and heists, but Colson Whitehead's name drew me to Harlem Shuffle. The conflicted mind of Carney, who is gradually pulled further into crime, is at the heart of the book, with the duality of his life a daytime furniture salesman and nighttime crook.

One of Colson Whitehead's undeniable abilities is his skill of constructing beautiful sentences with a finely tuned simplicity, not straying into overly flowery language. As with The Nickel Boys, he creates a vivid cast of characters, some of whom have that heist-movie gloss in their smooth manners, but the fractious nature of Carney's sense of self and morality are always centre stage. The focus on human frailty did allow Whitehead to win me over on a genre I'm not a huge fan of, but I wasn't captivated enough for it to be a pacey read, which I think it might be for other readers.

For me, some of the symbolism was a bit too explicit, with Whitehead explaining the concept of 'dorvay' rather than letting the meaning develop more naturally, but I understand that this was partly to capture Carney's reflections of his nocturnal activities. Despite this, the atmospheric portrayal of Harlem and precise characterisation did showcase Whitehead's expert craft in another compelling novel.

Great writing and characters ....but what I wasnt expecting is sheer readability and strong story line .. top quality literary plus unique and refreshing angle on being caught in moral tangle of life just above poverty level .. indeed middle class life .. I zoomed through .. very satisfying .. Carney's dilemma of consorting with a weak minded best friend gets him caught up in potential fraud in big way .. recommend highly

Colson Whitehead is at his best when following characters through a long span of their lives and Harlem Shuffle is a perfect example of his brilliance at work.

Harlem Shuffle is full of his brand of dry humour, witty and beautifully engaging to the point that you can't help but become absorbed by the lives of its characters. I know almost nothing about living in Harlem in the 60's and I know even less about heists and shakedowns, yet at the end of it, I wasn't left feeling confused or bored in the least. Instead, I enjoyed almost every aspect of it. However, I now finding myself unable to accurately review this book other than to say that it's slow and subtle narration may not be everyone's cup of tea, but so worth the time it takes.

Carney is one of those characters that you see trying to get by unscathed by the harrows of being poor in a city that requires you to constantly live beyond your means. As time goes by and you see him grappling with his moral compass, being pulled into the life he tried to leave behind - it's like a Carnival ride that you can't look away from.

Don't look away, because you just might miss the magic that Carney, and Whitehead, is ready to sprinkle on your life.

This book is like a cross between 'The Count of Monte Cristo'( that's name-checked multiple times), and 'The Sopranos', set in Harlem in the 60s. While the show 'Godfather of Harlem' shows us the times from Bumpy Johnson's perspective, this is from the perspective of someone living at the same time, whose life is peripherally affected by organised crime.
Ray Carney isn't a crooked man. That would be his dad you're thinking of, and Ray doesn't want to follow in his twisted paths at all. He doesn't mind some extra money though, and if he can't quite vouch for the provenance of some of the used goods in the Secondhand section of his furniture store, well, then, so be it. The plot follows Ray's inadvertent involvement in the criminal activities of his ne'er-d-well cousin, Freddie, and his attempts at extricating himself from situations that are bad for business, at best, and fatal, at worst. This story serves as the vehicle for Whitehead to take us through Carney's life, trying to move up the social ladder, the difficulties of entrepreneurship, exacerbated by racism, the increasing economic power of African Americans and the slow creep of gentrification. I particularly liked the parts about Ray's wife, Elisabeth and her work in a travel agency. The work she does, and how it evolves are fascinating-it caters to Black vacationers and works as a sort of Green Book, telling them towns to avoid and places to stay at. As time goes by, though, her work expands to bookings for civil rights activists and protestors, with the added complexities of the possibility of their hotels being attacked, and ways of protection in that case.
There's a quote of Obama's I always find particularly memorable, and I'm paraphrasing here-he talks about how once you've made it, you shouldn't be pulling up the ladder behind you. That's a pernicious human attitude, and Whitehead highlights how difficult it can be to surmount class barriers, and only a changing of the guard can break those.
Compelling book, with interesting characters and a great evocation of time and place.