The Pull It Sir

I read yesterday that Colson Whitehead won his second Pulitzer (pronounced "pull it sir" and thanks to Andrew Sean Greer for that pronunciation lesson care of his Pulitzer Prize winning book Less) Prize for his novel The Nickel Boys. Whitehead won previously for his novel The Underground Railroad. I am a huge fan of Colson Whitehead's work and thought he truly deserved to win for The Underground Railroad. However, this year, I think the wrong book won. Anne Tyler was a finalist for her novel The Dutch House and she should have won. I bought and read both The Nickel Boys and The Dutch House and Anne Tyler was robbed. The Dutch House was so much better than The Nickel Boys. It was. The writing, the story, everything. For me, it was a page turner and The Nickel Boys just wasn't. The Nickel Boys started strong and just fizzled out for me. It took me far too long to finish that book and it's not a long book. The subject matter is interesting and, I suspect, the judges gave more weight to that aspect of the novel rather than to the novel itself. Yes, a narrative about black boys in the 1960's who were sent to a reform school where they were tortured and killed is a more compelling subject than a story about two upper middle class white kids whose stepmother threw them out of the house where they grew up after their father died. I get it. But The Dutch House was the better book. Sorry, not sorry, but it was.