He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn’t ask questions, either. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.Ĭash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn’t ask where it comes from. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home.įew people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. “Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked…” To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. Revenge, cinematic fight scenes, criminality crackling in the air, even people with names like “Dootsie Bell” and “Miami Joe ” Harlem Shuffle is entertaining, yes, and also educational in a way that only a master of their craft could pull off. With sparing prose packed with a punch, Whitehead’s latest work is a realistic portrayal of how quickly life can get out of hand, as well as the forces-historical, institutional, and familial-that can propel any of us in a direction we didn’t think possible. But when his cousin, Freddie, pulls him into a heist, we’re forced to ask, “Just how crooked will Carney become?” Carney dreams of a better life for his family, and this motivates him to act as a go-between for thieves and those who acquire their stolen gems, TVs, and radios. Set in 1950s and 60s Harlem, Whitehead sucks us into the world of Ray Carney, a furniture salesman best described as “curved”-not exactly straight, but not exactly crooked.

The man doesn’t miss.Īnd Harlem Shuffle is no exception. John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, The Underground Railroad-novels as exciting and varied as an advent calendar, all connected by themes of power, representation, and America. As someone who grew up there and often felt like an outsider, it spoke to me. My introduction to the two-time Pulitzer winner was Sag Harbor a story about a Black kid who spends the summer on Long Island. When it comes to Colson Whitehead’s plots, you never know what you’re going to get.

The harlem shuffle colson whitehead