Book of the week: Broken Heartlands by Sebastian Payne

An ‘engrossing, warm and insightful’ guide to Labour’s evisceration in its traditional heartlands

Boris Johnson poses with workers during a visit to Wilton Engineering Services
Boris Johnson poses with workers during a visit to Wilton Engineering Services as part of his general election campaign, pictured in November 2019 in Middlesbrough, England
(Image credit: Frank Augstein - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Colson Whitehead is “simply incapable of writing a bad book”, said Ian Williams in The Guardian. Over 20 years, he has delivered both page-turners and weighty literary blockbusters – the two most recent of which, The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, were awarded Pulitzer Prizes for interrogating the US’s racist past.

Whitehead’s new novel, Harlem Shuffle, sees him revert to a lighter style, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times. A “pulpy neo-noir” set in the 1960s, it centres on Ray Carney, an ambitious furniture salesman who gets sucked into various criminal schemes. “It’s a red-blooded book full of powerful personalities”, which brings mid-century New York memorably to life.

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