‘Rejoice: the final instalment of the Harlem Trilogy is here’ Telegraph
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead, an exuberantly entertaining novel that brings 1980s New York to vivid, unforgettable life.
1981. New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline, energized by rampant real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Reagan-era predatory capitalism. Up in Harlem, successful business owner/master fence Ray Carney has just been named Sterling Furniture’s Dealer of the Month. When the banks won’t give his beloved wife, Elizabeth, a loan for her new travel agency, however, Carney gambles on one last heist, and finds himself entangled with a legendary criminal mastermind.
1983. To some, Carney’s friend and partner in crime Pepper is a stone-cold sociopath. To others, a top thief with questionable people skills. Either way, he’s feeling his age in his troubled gut and his aching bones. When he takes on a bodyguard gig as a favor to Elizabeth, he’s plunged into the alien territory of the East Village art and club scene. Luckily for him, whether you’re uptown or down, everyone speaks the same language of violence – Pepper is a native speaker.
1986. Carney has always been haunted by his inability to save his cousin Freddie. Now, twenty years after Freddie’s death, he has a chance to rescue Freddie’s son from the violent forces of the city. But coming out of retirement and teaming up with Pepper again will mean risking the safety and security he’s spent decades building for his family, with only one shot to get it right.
With his usual pitch-perfect prose, Whitehead paints a portrait of a city in transition, where shimmering skyscrapers rise to the heavens as displaced people huddle in abandoned tunnels below. In a dazzling display of protean imagination, Cool Machine roves all over the city, from Windows on the World to Sugar Hill, to show that in New York, and in the lives of Whitehead’s vivid characters, it’s what’s below the surface that reveals the truth.
‘It’s about Harlem in the ’80s. Colson Whitehead wrote three books about Harlem, one in the ’60s, one in the ’70s, and this is the last one. You do not need to have read the other two. Colson Whitehead is the best there is, period‘ Ann Patchett, Good Housekeeping
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead, an exuberantly entertaining novel that brings 1980s New York to vivid, unforgettable life.
1981. New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline, energized by rampant real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Reagan-era predatory capitalism. Up in Harlem, successful business owner/master fence Ray Carney has just been named Sterling Furniture’s Dealer of the Month. When the banks won’t give his beloved wife, Elizabeth, a loan for her new travel agency, however, Carney gambles on one last heist, and finds himself entangled with a legendary criminal mastermind.
1983. To some, Carney’s friend and partner in crime Pepper is a stone-cold sociopath. To others, a top thief with questionable people skills. Either way, he’s feeling his age in his troubled gut and his aching bones. When he takes on a bodyguard gig as a favor to Elizabeth, he’s plunged into the alien territory of the East Village art and club scene. Luckily for him, whether you’re uptown or down, everyone speaks the same language of violence – Pepper is a native speaker.
1986. Carney has always been haunted by his inability to save his cousin Freddie. Now, twenty years after Freddie’s death, he has a chance to rescue Freddie’s son from the violent forces of the city. But coming out of retirement and teaming up with Pepper again will mean risking the safety and security he’s spent decades building for his family, with only one shot to get it right.
With his usual pitch-perfect prose, Whitehead paints a portrait of a city in transition, where shimmering skyscrapers rise to the heavens as displaced people huddle in abandoned tunnels below. In a dazzling display of protean imagination, Cool Machine roves all over the city, from Windows on the World to Sugar Hill, to show that in New York, and in the lives of Whitehead’s vivid characters, it’s what’s below the surface that reveals the truth.
‘It’s about Harlem in the ’80s. Colson Whitehead wrote three books about Harlem, one in the ’60s, one in the ’70s, and this is the last one. You do not need to have read the other two. Colson Whitehead is the best there is, period‘ Ann Patchett, Good Housekeeping
Reviews
Don't be sad that Whitehead's rollicking Harlem trilogy is ending. Be happy that it exists and will remain endlessly re-readable as long as novels are around
It's about Harlem in the '80s. Colson Whitehead wrote three books about Harlem, one in the '60s, one in the '70s, and this is the last one. You do not need to have read the other two. Colson Whitehead is the best there is, period
The plotting is intricate, the heists violent, the human fears palpable
Last month, I took four books with me for a weeklong beach trip, and I only read this one - slowly. I'm a big fan of Whitehead's Harlem Trilogy, and I think this closing volume is the best of the bunch
This year sees Colson Whitehead conclude his Harlem trilogy, following upHarlem Shuffle andCrook Manifesto withCool Machine, set in 1980's New York
Whitehead's justly celebrated Harlem Trilogy comes to a triumphant, satisfying conclusion... packing three page-turning thrillers into one book that's sustained throughout by rich, engaging characterizations and lucid, provocative reflections on a community, a city, and a people which it presents as both exasperating and captivating with equal intensity. A master novelist in full command of his powers as a storyteller, prose stylist, and social observer
Colson Whitehead, one of America's most celebrated novelists, concludes his Harlem-set trilogy with protagonist Ray Carney and his family facing down fresh threats in a New York City transfigured by the whiplash of Ronald Reagan's conservatism. Throughout the 1980s, Ray and his partner in crime, Pepper, juggle heists and bourgeois aspirations, feeling the shiv of racism pressed against their fates. From rejuvenated uptown blocks to the East Village's high-octane art scene, Whitehead offers an ode to a majestic city and its diverse people
Whitehead followed the double-whammy gut-punch of his Pulitzer-winning slavery novel The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys (about institutional child abuse) by relaxing into a series of New York crime capers that began with 2021's Harlem Shuffle. Cool Machine concludes the trilogy by bringing his morally complex antihero, Ray Carney - a family man with a double life trading stolen goods - into the 1980's and the era of "greed is good"
Colson Whitehead has won the Pulitzer Prize two very well-deserved times, and Cool Machine is the latest in his staggeringly poignant oeuvre. New York City as it existed in the 1980s serves as the backdrop for this novel, and Whitehead masterfully leverages both its grit and glamour to stunning effect
The two-time Pulitzer laureate hits a high note with the conclusion to his Harlem trilogy
The conclusion to Whitehead's Harlem trilogy finds the furniture salesman Ray Carney and his partner in crime, Pepper, navigating midlife, a changing city and, as always, a dubious scheme or two
Two-time Pulitzer winner and the author of Oprah's 75th Book Club pick The Underground Railroad closes out his Harlem Trilogy with a swaggering trip through early '80s New York... Add old ghosts, bigger risks, and a city turning glossy and ruthless, and you've got Whitehead at his best
Every page is incandescent with longing, doubts, calculations, and determination as Whitehead's magnetic characters are pushed to the limits and the city roils. Whitehead gets every gritty, absurd, tender detail just right... This is a masterwork of crime fiction infused with labyrinthine suspense; brilliant, witty, and dynamic social insights; and profound questions of survival
Whitehead's Harlem Trilogy has easily been one of the high water marks for contemporary crime fiction, and the series comes to a fitting conclusion this year with Cool Machine, a wild march into 1980s New York... Whitehead is one of the most talented novelists of the era, and we're lucky he's taken on such a deeply felt, wildly entertaining project
