The dialogue and action were so shrouded in euphemism, so opaque in meaning and intention, alternatively dull and worrisome, that no one could decide what the play was about, if they understood it, let alone enjoyed it.
I can't help but think Colson Whitehead was talking about this very book when he wrote that prescient line into it.
Harlem Shuffle is a set of three loosely-related stories about furniture salesman and reluctant crook Ray Carney. He wants to lead an honest life, but that's not easy as a Black man in 1960s Harlem. So due to necessity and unfortunate circumstances, he keeps getting pulled into dodgy business.
The book blurb promises heists, and I'm immediately thinking of well-planned and well-executed ones à la Ocean's Eleven. But what I got instead were hijinks. Carney and his friends, through schemes and poor-decision making, would cause the sort of trouble that Carney can then only straighten out via crooked ways. Now that sounds interesting enough, but for some reason, it didn't feel compelling when I was actually reading it. Perhaps I'm just not the right audience for this type of gangster noir.
However, an even bigger problem is that the writing style didn't work for me. Instead of leading with contextual information, Whitehead often dropped the reader right into random thoughts or new characters—of which there were many—without explanation. Then after many paragraphs of incomprehensible blather, he finally provides context, at which point the reader would be forced to go back and reread it all again in order to gain understanding. In this way, I read numerous portions of this book many times.
The writing also has a tendency to be unfocused. Even the most straightforward of scenes would stretch to fill many pages, stuffed full of irrelevant musings, asides, and tangents. Those musings often involved characters we don't know or context we don't have, which adds to the confusion. And by the time I've come out of it, not only did I not understand, but I've forgotten where I am in the original scene.
I'm sure there is an interesting story in here somewhere, but my patience was stretched to the limits trying to find it. The third part (the last 100 pages) did finally feel closer to what I expected from the author, as if that was the story he had meant to write all along, but on realizing he was 200 pages short, fluffed out the rest and that's what we got.
This was a pretty disappointing read for me, especially from an author of Colson Whitehead's caliber. If you prefer your stories to be maximumly tedious and difficult to follow, then I recommend this book. For everyone else, I'd say stay away.
Readaroo Rating: 2 stars
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