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Harlem Shuffle: A Novel
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, this gloriously entertaining novel is "fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny ... about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel" (San Francisco Chronicle).
"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. 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.
Few 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. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
Cash 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 knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either.
Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa-the "Waldorf of Harlem"-and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.
Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?
Harlem Shuffle's ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.
But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.
"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. 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.
Few 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. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
Cash 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 knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either.
Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa-the "Waldorf of Harlem"-and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.
Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?
Harlem Shuffle's ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.
But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.
Editorial Reviews
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR•NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINEE • New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of the Year • One of The Washington Posts 50 Notable Works of Fiction of the Year • TIME Magazine 100 Must Read Books of the Year • One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, Slate, Boston Globe, Town & Country, Vulture, and more • One of President Obama's Favorite Books of the Year • One of The New York Times Critics' Best Books of the Year
"A rich, wild book that could pass for genre fiction. It's much more, but the entertainment value alone should ensure it the same kind of popular success that greeted his last two novels, The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys."
-Janet Maslin, The New York Times
One of the Ten Best Books of 2021
– Laura Miller, Slate
"Colson Whitehead has a couple of Pulitzers under his belt, along with several other awards celebrating his outstanding novels. Harlem Shuffle is a suspenseful crime thriller that's sure to add to the tally - it's a fabulous novel you must read."
-NPR.org
"A warm, involving novel"
-The Wall Street Journal
"A a fiendishly clever romp, a heist novel that's also a morality play about respectability politics, a family comedy disguised as a noir…Harlem Shuffle reads like a book whose author had enormous fun writing it. The dialogue crackles and sparks; the zippy heist plot twists itself in one showy misdirection after another. Most impressive of all is lovable family-man Ray, whose r...
"A rich, wild book that could pass for genre fiction. It's much more, but the entertainment value alone should ensure it the same kind of popular success that greeted his last two novels, The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys."
-Janet Maslin, The New York Times
One of the Ten Best Books of 2021
– Laura Miller, Slate
"Colson Whitehead has a couple of Pulitzers under his belt, along with several other awards celebrating his outstanding novels. Harlem Shuffle is a suspenseful crime thriller that's sure to add to the tally - it's a fabulous novel you must read."
-NPR.org
"A warm, involving novel"
-The Wall Street Journal
"A a fiendishly clever romp, a heist novel that's also a morality play about respectability politics, a family comedy disguised as a noir…Harlem Shuffle reads like a book whose author had enormous fun writing it. The dialogue crackles and sparks; the zippy heist plot twists itself in one showy misdirection after another. Most impressive of all is lovable family-man Ray, whose r...
Readers Top Reviews
Mr. A. Q. KoppMr.
A wonderfully atmospheric evocation of mid 20th centrury Harlam. Colston Whitehead has created a great set of characters who feel totally authentic. I understand to a native of Harlam and New York that the locations are very accurately described. They include the World Trade Centre being built. Importantly and sadly many of the issues faced by Black citizens then are still being faced by them.
Norman HousleyMr.
This book did not impress me quite as much as ‘The Underground Railroad’ and ‘The Nickel Boys’, although I have no doubt that it displays the same extraordinary talent. Both plot and style were rather too dense for my liking, and I never really engaged with the protagonist. At times I wondered if Whitehead was deliberately keeping emotional distance between Ray Carney and his readers. The result was that I admired the novel rather than enjoying it. But what brilliant writing, effortlessly fusing literary English and Harlem idiom, and what a wonderful recreation of Harlem and New York around 1960! Whitehead simply does so much so well.
SeanKindle Norma
I agree with another review I came across here on Amazon; Harlem Shuffle is more like three short novellas than it is a single cohesive one. The plot described on the back cover - where part-time fence Ray Carney is brought in on a heist by his wayward cousin Freddie - covers a bit less than 1/3rd of the book. From there, we spiral off in many directions. We follow Ray's attempts to join a club of elite Harlem movers and shakers. We follow the growth of his furniture store. We take numerous diversions into the backstories of characters that are either already dead or are quickly killed/otherwise written out of the plot. The whole thing seems to wander a bit before finding its footing again toward the end. Frankly, it feels to me like the author started writing the book with a plot in mind but quickly abandoned it and widened his scope. Most of the middle of this book fell flat for me and I had a difficult time staying engaged with it. That said, the writing is quite good. I will definitely read some of this author's other work. I think you'll LOVE this book if you live in NYC or have a deep connection to it. I realized too late that New York itself is the central character here, and while that generally wouldn't bother me, I found little else to hold onto while I read this book. I found it interesting that towards the end of the book, a certain character acknowledges his desire to live in a neighborhood where on calm, cool nights you might not even realize you were in the city at all. I get what he means.
Richard SimsSeanK
I did my medical residency at Harlem Hospital on the 1970’s with many memories of the heroic people there, who somehow raised families and conducted their lives righteously in the face of violence and fear. I could relate to Carney, the members of the Dumas Club and the thugs, I had the privilege to care for. The Harlem of my time has since been gentrified out of existence. I loved this book and had difficulty putting it down. Will there be a sequel (I hope)?
David ShulmanRich
Colson Whitehead paints a portrait of Harlem from 1959-1964 through the eyes of furniture store owner and family man Ray Carney. Through it all we learn all about the furniture styles and brands of the early 1960’s, a travelogue if you will. Aside from his day job running his furniture store Carney supplements his income as a part-time fence for stolen goods. His cousin Freddie continuously gets him into and at the outset Freddie is part of a safety deposit box heist at the famed Hotel Theresa. Simply put, to steal from the Hotel Theresa is a crime against the community, but no matter it happens, and Carney is there to fence some of the stolen goods. Along the way we meet the Harlem equivalent of Damon Runyan gangsters with names like “Miami Joe.” We also witness what I would call scenes from the class struggle in Harlem where Carney tries to join an exclusive club of local business leaders. The book ends against the backdrop of the July 1964 riots where Carney and his employees had to stand guard to protect their store along with Freddie getting Carney in real big trouble with the family of a major and very entitled real estate developer. This book is far lighter than Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys” and in my opinion, it is not a good, but well worth the read. You get a real sense of Harlem in the early 1960’s and it makes you wonder about how much or how little change there has been.
Short Excerpt Teaser
CHAPTER ONE
His cousin Freddie brought him on the heist one hot night in early June. Ray Carney was having one of his run-around days-uptown, downtown, zipping across the city. Keeping the machine humming. First up was Radio Row, to unload the final three consoles, two RCAs and a Magnavox, and pick up the TV he left. He'd given up on the radios, hadn't sold one in a year and a half no matter how much he marked them down and begged. Now they took up space in the basement that he needed for the new recliners coming in from Argent next week and whatever he picked up from the dead lady's apartment that afternoon. The radios were top-of-the-line three years ago; now padded blankets hid their slick mahogany cabinets, fastened by leather straps to the truck bed. The pickup bounced in the unholy rut of the West Side Highway.
Just that morning there was another article in the Tribune about the city tearing down the elevated highway. Narrow and indifferently cobblestoned, the road was a botch from the start. On the best days it was bumper-to-bumper, a bitter argument of honks and curses, and on rainy days the potholes were treacherous lagoons, one grim slosh. Last week a customer wandered into the store with his head wrapped like a mummy-beaned by a chunk of falling balustrade while walking under the damn thing. Said he was going to sue. Carney said, "You're in your rights." Around Twenty-Third Street the pickup's wheels bit into a crater and he thought one of the RCAs was going to launch from the bed into the Hudson River. He was relieved when he was able to sneak off at Duane Street without incident.
Carney's man on Radio Row was halfway down Cortlandt, off Greenwich, right in the thick. He got a space outside Samuel's Amazing Radio-repair all makes-and went to check that Aronowitz was in. Twice in the last year he'd come all the way down to find the shop shut in the middle of the day.
A few years ago, walking past the crammed storefronts was like twirling a radio dial-this store blared jazz into the street out of horn loudspeakers, the next store German symphonies, then ragtime, and so on. S & S Electronics, Landy's Top Notch, Steinway the Radio King. Now he was more likely to hear rock and roll, in a desperate lure of the teenage scene, and to find the windows crammed with television sets, the latest wonders from DuMont and Motorola and the rest. Consoles in blond hardwood, the sleek new portable lines, and three-in-one hi-fi combos with picture tube, tuner, and turntable in the same cabinet, smart. What hadn't changed was Carney's meandering sidewalk route around the massive bins and buckets of vacuum tubes, audio transformers, and condensers that drew in tinkerers from all over the tri-state. Any part you need, all makes, all models, reasonable prices.
There was a hole in the air where the Ninth Avenue el used to run. That disappeared thing. His father had taken him here once or twice on one of his mysterious errands, when he was little. Carney still thought he heard the train sometimes, rumbling behind the music and haggling of the street.
Aronowitz hunched over the glass counter, with a loupe screwed into his eye socket, poking one of his gizmos. "Mr. Carney." He coughed.
There weren't many white men who called him mister. Downtown, anyway. The first time Carney came to the Row on business, the white clerks pretended not to see him, attending to hobbyists who came in after him. He cleared his throat, he gestured, and remained a black ghost, store after store, accumulating the standard humiliations, until he climbed the black iron steps to Aronowitz & Sons and the proprietor asked, "Can I help you, sir?" Can I help you as in Can I help you? As opposed to What are you doing here? Ray Carney, in his years, had a handle on the variations.
That first day, Carney told him he had a radio in need of repair; he had just picked up his sideline in gently used appliances. Aronowitz cut him off when he tried to explain the problem and got to work unscrewing the case. Carney didn't waste his breath on subsequent visits, merely set the radios before the maestro and let him have his way with it. The routine went: weary sighs and grunts as he surveyed the problem, with a jab and flash of silver implements. His Diagnometer tested fuses, resistors; he calibrated voltage, rummaged through unlabeled trays in the steel filing cabinets along the walls of the gloomy shop. If something big was afoot, Aronowitz twirled in his chair and scurried into the workshop in the back, to more grunts. He reminded Carney of a squirrel in the park, darting helter-skelter after lost nuts. Maybe the other squirrels of Radio Row understood this behavior, but it was animal madness to this civilian.
Often Carney went down t...
His cousin Freddie brought him on the heist one hot night in early June. Ray Carney was having one of his run-around days-uptown, downtown, zipping across the city. Keeping the machine humming. First up was Radio Row, to unload the final three consoles, two RCAs and a Magnavox, and pick up the TV he left. He'd given up on the radios, hadn't sold one in a year and a half no matter how much he marked them down and begged. Now they took up space in the basement that he needed for the new recliners coming in from Argent next week and whatever he picked up from the dead lady's apartment that afternoon. The radios were top-of-the-line three years ago; now padded blankets hid their slick mahogany cabinets, fastened by leather straps to the truck bed. The pickup bounced in the unholy rut of the West Side Highway.
Just that morning there was another article in the Tribune about the city tearing down the elevated highway. Narrow and indifferently cobblestoned, the road was a botch from the start. On the best days it was bumper-to-bumper, a bitter argument of honks and curses, and on rainy days the potholes were treacherous lagoons, one grim slosh. Last week a customer wandered into the store with his head wrapped like a mummy-beaned by a chunk of falling balustrade while walking under the damn thing. Said he was going to sue. Carney said, "You're in your rights." Around Twenty-Third Street the pickup's wheels bit into a crater and he thought one of the RCAs was going to launch from the bed into the Hudson River. He was relieved when he was able to sneak off at Duane Street without incident.
Carney's man on Radio Row was halfway down Cortlandt, off Greenwich, right in the thick. He got a space outside Samuel's Amazing Radio-repair all makes-and went to check that Aronowitz was in. Twice in the last year he'd come all the way down to find the shop shut in the middle of the day.
A few years ago, walking past the crammed storefronts was like twirling a radio dial-this store blared jazz into the street out of horn loudspeakers, the next store German symphonies, then ragtime, and so on. S & S Electronics, Landy's Top Notch, Steinway the Radio King. Now he was more likely to hear rock and roll, in a desperate lure of the teenage scene, and to find the windows crammed with television sets, the latest wonders from DuMont and Motorola and the rest. Consoles in blond hardwood, the sleek new portable lines, and three-in-one hi-fi combos with picture tube, tuner, and turntable in the same cabinet, smart. What hadn't changed was Carney's meandering sidewalk route around the massive bins and buckets of vacuum tubes, audio transformers, and condensers that drew in tinkerers from all over the tri-state. Any part you need, all makes, all models, reasonable prices.
There was a hole in the air where the Ninth Avenue el used to run. That disappeared thing. His father had taken him here once or twice on one of his mysterious errands, when he was little. Carney still thought he heard the train sometimes, rumbling behind the music and haggling of the street.
Aronowitz hunched over the glass counter, with a loupe screwed into his eye socket, poking one of his gizmos. "Mr. Carney." He coughed.
There weren't many white men who called him mister. Downtown, anyway. The first time Carney came to the Row on business, the white clerks pretended not to see him, attending to hobbyists who came in after him. He cleared his throat, he gestured, and remained a black ghost, store after store, accumulating the standard humiliations, until he climbed the black iron steps to Aronowitz & Sons and the proprietor asked, "Can I help you, sir?" Can I help you as in Can I help you? As opposed to What are you doing here? Ray Carney, in his years, had a handle on the variations.
That first day, Carney told him he had a radio in need of repair; he had just picked up his sideline in gently used appliances. Aronowitz cut him off when he tried to explain the problem and got to work unscrewing the case. Carney didn't waste his breath on subsequent visits, merely set the radios before the maestro and let him have his way with it. The routine went: weary sighs and grunts as he surveyed the problem, with a jab and flash of silver implements. His Diagnometer tested fuses, resistors; he calibrated voltage, rummaged through unlabeled trays in the steel filing cabinets along the walls of the gloomy shop. If something big was afoot, Aronowitz twirled in his chair and scurried into the workshop in the back, to more grunts. He reminded Carney of a squirrel in the park, darting helter-skelter after lost nuts. Maybe the other squirrels of Radio Row understood this behavior, but it was animal madness to this civilian.
Often Carney went down t...
