James McBride's "Deacon King Kong"

 

You can find this item here.

The book is set in 1969 in Brooklyn. The plot itself swirls around how a community is affected by a single shooting. Sportcoat (or Deacon King Kong) shoots a young drug dealer, who he used to coach in baseball, for apparently no reason. The time, history, and more importantly the relationships of the its community, police, mobsters and church-goers all work together or against each other in a book that shows the vitality and fragility of that community.

Now, to be honest, I found this book slow in the beginning; but I did feel like it picked up for me after the first few chapters. The style of writing is very lyrical, and that may be why I found it a little slower (particularly since I just came from a Patterson novel where the pace is much faster). However, the characters felt well-rounded and the way McBride intersperses moments of humour with hardship and each character's fate and faith was well done. 

I can see why his book one prizes, like the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence. However, I would suggest that this book is for readers who prefer character-driven and dialogue-driven books as plot and action is second place in this novel. 

Links for you

McBride in the Library:

Good lord bird

This title is Fiction.

Kill 'em and leave

This title is a biography of James Brown

Book Review—The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

The abolitionist John Brown is terrorising the Southern states with tales of his exploits reaching boogeyman proportions. One day he wanders into Dutch Henry’s tavern and meets Henry Shackleford and his Pa. After a botched liberation he takes Henry into his army, although believing him a girl and calling him “Little Onion”. Henry witnesses Brown’s life and exploits as well as the social turmoil Kansas experiences at the idea of liberating slaves in the lead up to the Civil War.

The child narrator features prominently in the Southern literature from Mark Twain to Harper Lee. McBride adopts a similar position, but in his tale the ridiculous elements are heightened. Although this adds playfulness and wit to the tale, it does not shy away from more troubling elements, like the hanging of several slaves believed to be planning an insurrection, and Henry is far from the wide eye innocent child of earlier works dealing with slavery or race relations. He knows the vile habits and the treachery of the whites, as well as how to play the game of the ‘good negro’ in order to survive. Henry being mistaken for a girl and his willingness to don a dress and play that role divulges the spuriousness of this world. The more ridiculous and hyperbolic elements reflect the absurdity of the social structure of the South but without it becoming fanciful or otherworldly. It is simply the reality, the strange, twisted, paranoid reality that provided the institution of slavery with its constancy.

A modernisation of the slave narrative, The Good Lord Bird removes all innocence while revealing the farcicality of reality.
Andreas