John Crow’s Devil by Marlon James
My rating: 4/5 cats
fulfilling my 2021 goal to read one book each month by an author i love that i haven’t gotten around to reading yet
God judgment a no play-play judgment.
God not romping with we.
when i read The Book of Night Women, i fell right the hell in love with marlon james. i read A Brief History of Seven Killings and Black Leopard, Red Wolf as soon as they came out,* but—although i owned a copy of this debut before i ever read The Book of Night Women,** i never backtracked and read it until now.
i’d heard that it wasn’t as good as The Book of Night Women, and i wasn’t in any real hurry to be disappointed, but while—no, it’s not as good as ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I’VE EVER READ, it’s still a monster of a debut and all the qualities that make my readerheart pitter-patter 4 marlon james are already there, they’re just a little…smaller and less polished.
this is a story about the conflict between two preachers in an isolated jamaican village.
it does not end well.
for anybody.
that’s the simple synopsis of a complicated book, which opens with the story’s end, before the reader has any context to understand the significance of what is happening, which is followed by further temporal shifts, slippery POVs—collective and singular, a story loaded with foreshadowing and withheld information full of bibles and booze, obeah and brutality, and it’s allllll in dialect.
the prose is absolutely chewy—like one a them granola bars whose wholesome fiber is threaded throughout with sticky caramel, only instead of nuts, this one is studded with shards of broken glass because marlon james never makes anything easy—not in his subject matter and not in his writing style.
this is something i’ve always admired about him.
the magical realism threw me a bit—i honestly found this one more confusing in parts than Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which is by far james’ most challenging work (and a close second-place to The Book of Night Women in my heart). i’m fine with the dialect and i have a passing familiarity with obeah from previous reads, but, since i wasn’t always clear on POV, i wasn’t always clear on reliability—whether events were happening as described, or being filtered through a…compromised perspective—be it religious mania, agenda, or…the apostle’s condition.
so, yeah—there were some foggy stretches here and there, but when it’s on, it’s ON—his prose is all swagger and sharp teeth, and that ending.
that ENDING.
not so much the ending-ending—if you know me, you know i’m talking about
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although that thing with clarence at the end is also…memorable.
i’m so glad i finally read this. and now i’ll just sit here until Moon Witch, Night Devil comes out.
* sooner, even, in the case of A Brief History of Seven Killings, cuz i grabbed that ARC with the snatchiest hands.
** oh, hey—and this is a first edition! that means alla my marlon james’ are first editions! i have a full set! oh, but i don’t remember if i ever bought A Brief History of Seven Killings when it came out. i might have been too poor at the time and just cuddled the ARC. this footnote is just me talking to myself, hello!
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