New & Current Releases
Archives: A-Z By Title
Archives: A-Z By Author
Advanced Search

All-Time High Scores
Best Of 2006
Best Of 2005
Best Of 2004
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Books In Our Forums

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed books.

Apex Hides The Hurt
by Colson Whitehead


9.3

based on 20 reviews
read critic reviews
how did we calculate this?

based on 3 votes
read user comments
rate this book

Compare prices at pricegrabber.com

Buy it at powells.com

Buy it at amazon.com

Buy it at amazon.co.uk

A small town hires a down-on-his-luck product naming consultant to devise a new identity for the town in this satire from the author of "John Henry Days."

Doubleday, 224 pages
03/21/2006
$22.95

ISBN: 038550795X

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Booklist Donna Seaman

Kindred spirit to Stanley Elkin, William Gaddis, and Paul Auster, Whitehead archly explicates the philosophy of excess and the poetics of ludicrousness, and he incisively assesses the power inherent in the act of naming. [1 Jan 2006, p.64]

Boston Globe Saul Austerlitz

Wickedly funny... Whitehead is making a strong case for a new name of his own: that of the best of the new generation of American novelists.

Kirkus Reviews

While making no attempt at depth of characterization, Whitehead audaciously blurs the line between social realism and fabulist satire. [1 Jan 2006, p.15]

Library Journal Bette-Lee Fox

In spare and evocative prose, Whitehead does Shakespeare one better: What's in a name, and how does our identity relate to our own sense of who we are? [1 Jan 2006, p.106]

Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese

Apex Hides the Hurt... may not mark the apex of Colson Whitehead's career, but it brims with the author's spiky humor and intelligence.

Chicago Tribune Beth Kephart

Whitehead is not just as brilliant a guide to our culture as any Malcolm Gladwell ("The Tipping Point") or David Brooks ("On Paradise Drive"), he is also wickedly funny. [2 Apr 2006]

Christian Science Monitor Darryl Wellington

It's Whitehead's best-plotted novel to date. Whereas his first two novels sprawled, this time around Whitehead's love of language, which was always apparent, services the story.

The New York Times Book Review David Gates

The parodically conventional mystery provides the novel's forward motion, but -- and here's the paradox -- what keeps you reading this critique of language is its language, and our perverse delight in the ingenious abuse of words.

USA Today Bob Minzesheimer

No novelist writing today is more engaging and entertaining when it comes to questions of race, class and commercial culture than Colson Whitehead.

Village Voice Mark Swartz

Attractively titled and sleekly packaged, this is a book best read in two or three sittings, by the same logic ordaining that a Band-Aid should be pulled off all at once.

Houston Chronicle Andrew Guy Jr.

Whitehead has crafted a focused social satire with a strong bite of racial reconciliation, but the secondary characters seem hollow.

The New Yorker

Trenchantly funny.

The Onion A.V. Club Keith Phipps

Whitehead keeps his prose as streamlined as it comes, and he uses it to craft a satiric novel in tune with a moment where marketing overshadows content and even the lowliest blogger thinks in branding terms.

Washington Post Gideon Lewis-Kraus

It's tempting to regard this new novel as a minor and predictable allegory. The book, however, deserves a better reading than that.

Sydney Morning Herald Michael McGirr

A book of abundant irony.

Los Angeles Times Erin Aubry Kaplan

Too often, he can't resist the temptation of irony, and his big ideas are sometimes overwhelmed by one wink-wink or metaphor too many.

PopMatters Scott Esposito

It is no surprise that Apex Hides the Hurt, Whitehead's third novel, is packed with a number of allegorical elements blended into a multi-layered structure. What's unfortunate, however, is that all this technical artistry is in the service of unremarkable themes and ideas.

San Francisco Chronicle Michelle Orange

It's pure joy to read writing like this, but watching Whitehead sketch out a minor character's essence with one stroke, while breathtaking, makes one wish the same treatment was afforded the people who ostensibly inhabit the novel's complex ideas.

New York Observer Anna Shapiro

Readers not looking for direct emotional access to the characters may find it gratifying to solve the intellectual puzzle set here by Colson Whitehead. [27 Mar 2006]

Publishers Weekly

Whitehead disappoints in this intriguingly conceived but static tale of a small town with an identity crisis. [30 Jan 2006, p.40]

The average user rating for this book is 9.3 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Michael K. gave it a9:
I loved all three of the author's previous books and I'm giving this a good rating, however, my only criticism is that at barely 200 pages I feel it's not quite enough for a writer who I think belongs in the first rank of young American novelists, alongside the Jonathan Franzens, Zadie Smiths (I know she's a Londoner), et al. That said, the protagonist is a professional nomenclature consultant or basically what used to be called an adman. But besides subliminal advertising and other marketing concerns, the act of naming also has allegorical implications in the novel involving identity, race, history, etc. For intance, the name of the protagonist's alma mater, "Quincy College" (Harvard?) opens doors for him. There's also a politics of place names at play here, which is often an issue in postcolonial cultures around the world. On the other hand, the name of the fictional mayor, "Regina Goode," conjures up another African American mayor, Wilson Goode of Philadelphia, but for what purpose I can't say. But this a very imaginative, thought-provoking novel.

Dara G gave it a9:
This book is far better than the Metacritic score indicates. Much like Percival Everett does in novels like American Desert or Erasure, Colson Whitehead pens a scathing social critique that incorporates humor and an African-American perspective. A book not to be overlooked.

Discuss this book in our forums

Return to top of page

Apex Hides The Hurt by Colson Whitehead

Apex Hides The Hurt
by Colson Whitehead