A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
My rating: 4/5 cats
this book is a little challenging at the outset, but if you stick with it, you will be rewarded like a motherfucker. (note: if that word upsets you, this book is not for you)
it’s not the length that is challenging, although 700 pages is a nice chunky brick of a book, and it’s not the dialect, unless this is your first exposure to patois. even then, this is a multi-voiced novel, with several characters who are not jamaican, so unlike The Book of Night Women, there are many parts that are not written in dialect, and like reading irvine welsh, once you get into that voice, it’s easy as pie to read.
the challenging part – for me – was getting situated. at first, the chapters just come at you hard, without context of who these characters are in relation to each other. there is a very handy “cast of characters” section in the beginning but even then, i was lost for quite some time before i managed to understand the connective threads. and you might not have this problem – when i started this i was still on my delicious post-op percocet, so i admit there was some blurriness and some dulling to my cognitive capabilities. but the first chapter is narrated by a ghost for goodness’ sake, and then goes right into the voice of a fourteen year old jamaican boy witnessing extreme violence and mentioning characters named, among others, “shotta sherrif,” “josey wales,” and “doctor love,” before the next chapter swerves you into the story of a middle-aged white american man in a fast food restaurant in jamaica and by now your head is spinning with “what have i gotten myself into???”
but stick with it, because it will all come together beautifully. and after all, you have 700 pages to get the hang of it!
i am not a history buff. before i read this book, i didn’t know anything about the political and social climate of jamaica in the 70’s. there were superficial things i had picked up on by reading other books, but this is such a big fat immersion into the time and place that is working really hard to paint a broad picture of three decades of the jamaican experience, and is so successful at it, that even if you are like me and this is all new information, and you are swimming in acronyms: jlp, pnp, cia, you will not be lost, even with the “thrown into the deep end” beginning.
and, yeah, the hook for the american readership is that one of this book’s touchpoints is the 1976 assassination attempt on bob marley, called here only “the singer,” but that’s far from its most interesting story, and not just because of my sleepy indifference to reggae. the massive sprawl of this book is so much more than that – it’s the warring criminal underworld of kingston, government conspiracies, the evolution of the drug trade, diaspora, the corrupt police, the specific hardships of women, the american cutesification of a country riddled with poverty and unrest – it’s a brick for a reason.
it is epic, in that word’s most precise definition.
and while i have, surprisingly, never read james ellroy, i feel like his fans would really enjoy this book, because it does what i understand ellroy to also be doing: juxtaposing small(er) scale crime stories against global politics and the treatment of smaller countries like petting zoos or chessboards. but in jamaica. with less staccato prose. (detail provided by ellroy-fan greg)
there is nothing this man can’t do. for the second time, he has created a complex, nuanced, credible female character in nina burgess (aka), and tells so many harsh and beautiful and strong stories, you are left weak at the end. and not to diminish his skills as a writer, but he’s also fucking dreamy. i know this book isn’t even out for months yet, but i am already foaming at the mouth for his next one.
seriously, don’t miss this. it will be talked about.
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congratulations and ADORABLE!!
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oh my god do you see what i have??
but do you know what i don’t have?
time to read it.
cruelest world ever
