Chances are that you’ve heard of Colson Whitehead’s new novel, since it’s earned Oprah’s seal of approval (which came with a surprise early release date) and it’s already a bestseller.
Dear Readers, The Underground Railroad absolutely lives up to all of the good press.
In a tale that echoes the Odyssey and Gulliver’s Travels, The Underground Railroad follows the journey of Cora, teenage girl who escapes the hideous cruelties of a Georgia plantation (only to find uncertain harbors) via the Underground Railroad. In the novel, it’s not only a path of safe houses, trusted helpers, and secret routes, but also an actual subterranean railway, with branches and lines—all dangerous, all necessary.
By fashioning the narrative with this kind of mythic, not-quite-fantastic element (there are others: the notorious Tuskegee experiment is transplanted to antebellum South Carolina that is supposedly “progressive”; in gatherings that resemble our notion of the Salem witch trials, ordinary citizens in North Carolina conduct lynchings every Friday night), Mr. Whitehead reveals what he calls “states of possibility.” Each stop on Cora’s travels through this alternative Southern landscape—albeit a landscape grounded in the terrible facts of slavery—resonates through facets of American history that we must not forget.
Handling this dense underpinning of history and metaphor with grace and subtlety, Mr. Whitehead in The Underground Railroad never loses sight of the individual human story. Cora’s journey is the novel’s main line, but at intervals other branches spin off, illuminating the lives of secondary characters. These include Ajarry (Cora’s grandmother, kidnapped in Africa and brought across the ocean), Caesar (a literate man, the slave who convinces Cora to escape), and Ethel (a white woman who, for a time, grudgingly shelters Cora).
But the book belongs to Cora, an unforgettable character, a heroine. At the beginning of the novel, she’s on the sidelines; when her friend tries to get her to dance, “Cora never joined her, tugging her arm away. She watched.” Abandoned by her mother, who escaped alone, Cora is a “stray” among her fellow slaves, living with damaged women in a cabin called Hob. When she escapes though, she becomes the object of one man’s focus: she’s hunted by the same fanatic slave-catcher who failed to find her mother.
Cora is wary and slow to trust (absolutely understandable), strong-willed, intelligent, and very brave. She witnesses horrors that should be unspeakable, impossible; she is haunted by what she has seen and what has been done to her. The tension, even when she seems relatively safe, is always high, so that when the narrative grants her a reprieve, it feels to the reader like a long exhalation after a breath held too long:
She grabbed his hand. The almanac had a strange, soapy smell and made a cracking noise like fire as she turned the pages. She’d never been the first person to open a book before.
I hope you’ll open this one. The Underground Railroad is highly recommended.
Read more:
A great review of The Underground Railroad (much more thorough than this one)
An interview with Colson Whitehead
Rosemary and Reading Glasses 
It’s already on my tbr, but now I’m even more excited about it 😀
Excellent!
SO. KEEN.
It’s so good.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read this – I tried plodding through Whitehead’s The Colossus of New York and found it unbearably pretentious. But I’ll add this to my tbr and give him a second chance!
I can’t say that his earlier work jumps out at me as must-read—but in one of the interviews I read he talked about how different each book is from the last.
Hmm, it sounds unusual. I’m stlill not sure I want to read it.
It’s so good, Kay. It’s not speculative or fantastical in a strange way–it’s almost too real.
OK, considering . . . So much to read!
I do hope to read this sometime, but it’s nice to hear you agree with all the hype!
I think you’d love it.
I was kind of… meh, too much hype, then I happened upon a little article he wrote making fun of BEA, of all things, from like 2011, and thought “he seems alright” and now I’m listening to an interview with him on Writers and Company podcast and he seems brilliant! So yeah, buying into the hype now.
Do it!
Slavery in novels always makes me wary. A few friends have posted some violent passages on social media which made me remove my library hold on it, but this is a fabulous review. I might have to reconsider.
I can totally understand that. I found Beloved, for instance, devastating (which it is and ought to be), and I’m wary of non-POC writers approaching the topic. There is definitely violence in The Underground Railroad, and haunting imagery, but it is not at all gratuitous (also, I’d say it was less graphic than The Orenda–different subject, but maybe you’ve read it?–and less grueling than A Little Life because it was shorter.).
I was on the fence about this one, but you’ve convinced me. Alas, my library system does not own it!
Really?!?! I mean, I know it’s an American release, but egads, it’s so popular here!
This is on its way to me from the library. I am very much looking forward to it!
Really looking forward to this one, having seen him in inteview a couple of years back and been struck by his take on the world. The only one I’ve read so far is Zone One, which I found tremendously disturbing and affecting (in positive ways, although the story is very difficult in parts); it made me want to read e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.
I love his interviews and the few funny short pieces I’ve read–he seems like one of those authors it’d be delightful to have a cup of tea with.
Heheh. Yes, that’s it. Exactly.
Thanks for this review! I snagged a copy of this book at the library the last time I went, and I’m really looking forward to reading it. It’s pretty rare for me to read fiction set during slavery — it’s just very very hard to read about that much ugliness and violence — but I’ve heard SO much good stuff about The Underground Railroad that I’m making an exception.
I’m so glad you are! It’s such a good, timely book.
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