The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

A Muhammed Ali of a book. Hard-hitting and beautifully done. I feel physically better for having read such writing. I don’t remember ever rooting for a character like I did for Cora, knowing that the truth-witnessing of the author was never going to pull any punches.
 
The one gripe I had was when Cora’s story jumps forward to Indiana. Colson Whitehead has a penchant for introducing a new scene and sketching in the backstory to it later, which is fine, only this time it comes unstuck. I was quite lost, looking around at the new farm and new characters and not knowing where I was, or who they were. I even flipped back several pages to see if I might have accidentally skipped a brief intervening chapter, but nope.
 
That’s by and by. The Underground Railroad is one hell of a story. I guess it’s just me, something I had pending, but for some reason, it feels appropriate to be reading about slavery in America right now.