An intriguing and frequently horrifying look at the experience of slavery in the United States prior to the Civil War, from the point of view of the slaves, with an interesting fantastical spin. In reality, “The Underground Railroad” was a metaphor for the chain of sympathisers and safe houses who conveyed escaped slaves from the South to the northern states. In this book, that metaphor is imagined as reality — literal underground rail lines and steam engines carrying escapees north.

Though this award-winning book is definitely well worth reading, at the end I wasn’t entirely sure what this fantastical premise adds to the human story of the slaves and the appalling treatment they had to endure. It made me wonder, in fact, how much of the story was based in actual fact and what was part of a dystopian historical fantasy. I’m tempted to say most of it is based on solid, sordid fact, but without doing more research I don’t know.

Certainly on its own terms, the novel is heartbreaking as we follow the fortunes of Cora and Caesar attempting to escape from a plantation in Georgia. The chapters are interleaved with actual historical advertisements placed by slave-owners seeking the recovery of their escaped ‘property’. And there’s nothing more chilling than the way the slave-hunter Ridgeway continually and casually refers to an escaped slave as “it” rather than “he” or “she”, the same way as one might refer to an escaped horse. ( )

An interesting, brutal and heart breaking book. I’ve seen some other reviews that call Cora unlikable or cold. Just don’t get it. She survives , and somehow, despite rape and torture, still cares if a child trusts her and rejoices in an almanac. Be prepared for a difficult journey, it is not sugar coated, but it is worth it ( )

Extraordinary, horrifying and compelling and necessary. Thinking about the sort of sub-genre of works that this feels part of or adjacent to, books like Confessions of the Fox (fiction) and Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (nonfiction) that address directly the tangled relationship of history, the inherently political nature of documentation or lack thereof, and the task of telling true and necessary stories. ( )

This has been setting the Internet all abuzz and to a certain degree I understand it. It was in parts absolutely riveting, and endlessly dull. Well-written but a little too detached for my personal preference. I wavered between giving it a 4 or 3 star rating. I ended on 3 stars purely because it lacked the ability to generate depth of feeling in me. I just didn’t care enough about the characters, and I hated the abrupt ending. I wanted the main protagonist’s, Cora, story to end... if not happily then at least in a satisfactory manner. In short, a good book but I wanted more... MORE. ( )

When, seventy or so pages into a novel about slavery, the underground railroad of the title turns out to be a literal underground railroad, you know the author is approaching his subject from an altered and unique position. Either that or your history teachers in school really fucking let you down.

Lest one think that turning the underground railroad into an actual railroad is a turn towards the twee or kitsch, Whitehead gives the reader the full horror of the historical slave experience. After a traditionally brutal Georgia plantation experience to open, he takes the main character, Cora, on a hellacious journey across four states - and here Whitehead's altered take is even more front and center, for each state represents a different approach that white America has taken towards black America.

First Cora is taken to South Carolina, where negro uplift is the announced goal. Ex-slaves like Cora are provided housing and jobs, tutored and mentored by apparently caring and generous white folks. Labor policy is astonishingly progressive. It definitely appears to be a bizarro South Carolina, but underneath this apparent benevolence lurks another historical American sin, eugenics. The state has decided to solve its race problem through coerced sterilization and planned breeding, to "improve" the inferior African race while limiting its numbers.

Next Cora is taken to North Carolina, whose white population has decided to solve the race problem through extermination. Fearful of black uprisings and revenge, slavery is abolished and any blacks found in the state, and their white concealers, are lynched - sometimes on sight, and sometimes at weekly celebrations on the town squares. The black bodies are then hung from trees all along "Freedom Road", which runs through the state. This is the lynch mob taken as far as it can be taken.

Up next is Tennessee, which slumbers in fatalism and turns its head. A big part of the state has been burnt to the ground after a brush clearing fire gets out of hand, and towns warn outsiders to stay away because of yellow fever epidemics. Disaster and punishment seem arbitrary, and if you're dealt a bad lot, that's just the way the world is. No sense complaining... or agitating for something the world isn't fixed to give.

Finally Cora ends up in Indiana. Here things again seem pretty good at first. It's a free state, and on the Valentine farm upwards of a hundred or so African-Americans have established a sort of empowerment zone, with a library, schoolhouse, lectures and discussions, and a sturdy democratic governance. Its success is spreading as members buy neighboring land to establish their own farms. But white America cannot tolerate this in-community self-improvement either, and in a violent assault smashes the farm and scatters its survivors.

As may be evident by now, the characters here are by far secondary to the larger picture and history the novel is painting. Cora is the vessel to move through these scenes; other characters periodically play their roles, from the underground railroad station masters to the slave catcher Ridgeway, who stalks Cora throughout the book.

Ultimately the novel holds up a discomfiting mirror to America, as in the words of one character:

America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes - believes with all its heart - that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are."

Yep. Here we are. ( )