The Intuitionist, by Colson Whitehead
Enjoyable surreal fiction about race and elevators
(Review posted 16 Apr 2005 13:17:59)

Lila Mae Watson is an elevator inspector in a city that takes its elevators very seriously. She is also a 'colored' woman in a city whose racism is more obvious (if perhaps no more pervasive) than the cities that we have now. There are two competing schools of elevator inspection, and the Intuitionist inspectors are consistently ten percent more accurate than the Empiricists. And somewhere there are the lost notebooks of James Fulton, author of Theoretical Elevators, that may contain the design for the perfect elevator, that will take humanity's cities to the second elevation.

This is an odd book, an original book, a satisfying book that's just the right length. The imagery that Whitehead weaves about elevators and elevation is rich and interesting and subtle. (I never did figure out who the Screaming Man was; if you read the book and figure it out, let me know.)