{"id":2625,"date":"2021-05-27T21:19:16","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T21:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2625"},"modified":"2023-04-02T23:14:50","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T23:14:50","slug":"the-harlem-shuffle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2625","title":{"rendered":"The Harlem Shuffle"},"content":{"rendered":"

With two Pulitzer prizes for fiction under his belt, it\u2019s not surprising when Colson Whitehead writes a character for the ages, but beleaguered everyman Ray Carney is a standout even for Whitehead. \u201cLiving taught you that you didn\u2019t have to live the way you\u2019d been taught to live,\u201d says Carney, a young Black man who\u2019s barely making ends meet in his Harlem furniture store while dreaming of more. The pressure\u2019s on, too: his parents-in-law think their daughter could have done better, and Carney longs to be admitted to his father in law\u2019s \u201cpaper-bag club,\u201d but with skin darker than said brown bag, he\u2019s not allowed. Loyalty to his own family leads Ray to help his cousin Freddy; always sketchy, Freddy convinces Carney to help him in a can\u2019t-go-wrong robbery scheme that, yes, goes wrong, starting Carney on a heartbreaking trajectory. This character\u2019s relentless efforts to make good in a world that expects and revels in his failure will remind readers of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables<\/em>. Shadowing Colson\u2019s terrific crime tale are the final throes of Jim Crow and the claw-your-way-up culture of early 1960s Harlem, but most of all, Carney will grab readers\u2019 hearts and stay with them<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With two Pulitzer prizes for fiction under his belt, it\u2019s not surprising when Colson Whitehead writes a character for the ages, but beleaguered everyman Ray Carney is a standout even…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[104,59,164,51],"class_list":["post-2625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-african-american-black","tag-literary","tag-star","tag-thrillers"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Harlem-Shuffle-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Harlem-Shuffle-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}