The Underground Railroad in Our Shared Shelf

Jan 04, 2017 Rita rated it really liked it

Shelves: adult, slavery, underground-railroad, girl-power

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I probably shouldn't have chosen to read this book over the holidays as it wasn't a real "pick me up" kind of story, but I did love it. It was well written and hard to put down. I loved the character Cora and/or Bessie and was so relieved that she survived in the end! I love a book when it can surprise me and I was truly surprised that Colson killed off Cora's mother Mabel. We were led to believe during the whole entire story that she was one of the lucky ones to get away only to find out that s I probably shouldn't have chosen to read this book over the holidays as it wasn't a real "pick me up" kind of story, but I did love it. It was well written and hard to put down. I loved the character Cora and/or Bessie and was so relieved that she survived in the end! I love a book when it can surprise me and I was truly surprised that Colson killed off Cora's mother Mabel. We were led to believe during the whole entire story that she was one of the lucky ones to get away only to find out that she got bit by a snake and died in a swamp never to be found! I guess it is better to have hopes that someone is alive if you really don't know...

Like some others that have commented earlier, I was also a little disappointed that the author used the "underground railroad" so literally. I did some googling to find this:

WHITEHEAD: Actually, I was pretty reluctant to immerse myself into that history. It took 16 years for me to finish the book. I first had the idea in the year 2000, and I was finishing up a long book called "John Henry Days," which had a lot of research. And I was just sort of, you know, getting up from a nap or something (laughter) and thought, you know, what if the Underground Railroad was an actual railroad? You know, I think when you're a kid and you first hear about it in school or whatever, you imagine a literal subway beneath the earth. And then you find out that it's not a literal subway, and you get a bit upset. And so the book took off from that childhood notion. And that's a premise, not that much of a story. So I kept thinking about it. And I thought, well, what if every state our hero went through - as he or she ran North - was a different state of American possibility? So Georgia has one sort of take on America and North Carolina - sort of like "Gulliver's Travels." The book is rebooting every time the person goes to a different state.

I guess it is his book to write so I can accept it, but it will be a hard one to swallow...especially since now there will be people who don't get the reference and they will actually think there was a literal underground railroad...think Da Vinci code all over again for those librarians who actually had to explain to their patrons that it is in the fiction section for a reason...

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Jul 08, 2017 Dana Berglund rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-for-grown-ups

Painful, but an interesting look at what an alternative history could have been like. It follows the life of a woman born into planation slavery who finds herself at multiple crossroads to move her toward a life of freedom. The story stretched historical plausibility a little, but didn't quite make the jump into sci fi or steampunk or even clear alt-history. I was a little confused by this, actually, as I kept trying to place this at a specific point in history, but glaring anachronisms kept me ...more

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Dec 14, 2016 Serena rated it really liked it

If Django Unchained and 12 years a slave had a baby. And I mean this in the best possible way.

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Dec 13, 2016 Aaron rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Every good thing you hear about this book is and will remain true. Whitehead has produced a masterpiece of historical fiction and literature that bubbles with this country's shame of slavery as well as the pride and determination of blacks who have risked everything to merely be.

If you don't find this book shocking and enthralling and important, it's possible that books are not for you. If you read this book and love it like I do, let me know...I'd love to discuss it with you. ...more

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May 26, 2018 Alexis rated it liked it

I can tell that this is a very, very good book, but something about the way it jumped around instead of being told in a more linear fashion made it extremely difficult for me to invest in until the second half of the book. The first half just dragged for me so much that I had to knock off a star from what is clearly more of a 4-star book (or maybe more).

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