The Intuitionist

This was a great book, although I would say it is just *barely* speculative. It does present a sort of surrealist, quasi-alternate history world.(And, given how little I know about the history of eleveators, maybe not even that much of an alternate history.) The plot is set in a undated world - maybe tne 1960's or 1970's, in an unnamed city - likely New York. in this world, elevator inspection is almost as revered - and as corrupt -as a police department or other branch of law enforcement. The main character is the first Black woman elevator inspector; she is a straight shooter in a department that is mired in racism, inter-office politics, graft, and organized crime. Additionally, as though Lila Mae doesn't have enough to set her apart, she is an "Intuitionist" - someone who believes they can intuit the inner workings of an elevator, rather than having to follow a checklist or physically look at the mechanics of the elevator to assess who well it is running (the more traditional, conservative elevator inspection method pushed by the Empiricists, who control her department.) While Lila Mae tries to keep a low profile in her department, she gets pulled into the seedy open secrets of her department when an eleveator she inspects suffesr a statistically improbable crash.

This is an odd, enjoyable book. The elevation (sorry, pun) of elevators to almost sacred objects makes the book feel borderline absurdist, even though it also manages to hit many of the beats of a more traditional noir or hero-cop narrative. It definitely has some interesting commentary on race that brought to mind Pauline HOpkins' Of One Blood. I really liked the chracter of Lila Mae. My one critique of the story is that while Lila Mae is the first Black female elevator inspector - and, from what I could tell, might be the ONLY female elevator inspetor - the fact that she is a woman in an extremely male-dominated field seems almost completely ignored. While Whitehead is very comfortable, and very adept, at exploring the racial politics of the environment, it is equally obvious that he wasn't comfortable taking on the sexual politics of thsi world, which made the book ring slightly false.

Otherwise, a great and unusual read.