It certainly does, but I'm still in two minds on this one.
The story foillows Cora, a slave in pre-civil-war USA. She escapes via the Underground Railroad of the title - here reimagined as an actual railroad. The conducter on the first train she catches tells her that if she looks out of the window while she's travelling, she'll see the real face of America. Being an underground train, all there is is darkness when she looks.
This is a book that needs to be read in long stretches. Picking it up for twenty minutes at a time (like I tend to on my lunch break) isn't good enough on this.
I found it always took me a few pages to tune into the style of writing and grasp the rhythms of it. This meant the more fragmented the read, the less satisfying the book. And unfortunately, my reading has been fragmented this last two weeks.
When I did manage a few good long hour plus reading sessions, this was an excellent read that flowed nicely and truly had me absorbed into the story.
It has a matter of fact feel to the prose which I thought put too much distance between the characters and myself and some places where I should have found myself quite upset or shocked at the fate of the characters felt a little flat.
That's not to say I didn't enjoy it. The section set in South Carolina, which feels like paradise for the runaway slaves was brilliantly done, steadily peeling back the layers and revealing possibly the darkest underside in any section of the book. I won't say more about that sequence because of spoilers, but it was certainly the most shocking sequence.
Cora was a good protagonist, intelligent, likeable and capable. She never ceases to be a believable character. When bad things are happening, she reacts accordingly.
The story is extremely episodic. Each new stop on the railroad leads to a different set of problems, with racism sometimes buried deep beneath a layer of superficial acceptance, and sometimes signified by dead slaves strung up on every pole for a mile.
However, Whitehead chooses most of the time to jump into each new episode a few weeks after the characters' arrival and jump back and forwards in the timeline to explain how they got to the situation they're currently in. This was occasionally confusing, particularly when dozens of characters are introduced in a mater of three pages. He also isn't the best at foreshadowing which is a technique he uses in a few sections to not great effect.
So overall this is a mixed bag. It has a lot to recommend it, but also has some distinct flaws. I actually think this felt like a more real depiction of slave life than Uncle Tom's cabin which I read last year (and which of course was contemporaneous to the slave trade).
It may be just that I didn't get enough long stretches to read this in, that might be the reason I can't decide on this. It certainly feels like an important book. But why wasn't I more moved by the tragedies that occured - with the exception of one near the end of the book (no spoilers)?
If book group actually happens next week, I may expand on my comments.
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