A Brief History of Seven Killings

One sentence synopsis... Jamaica, 1976, days before the general election several gunmen attempt to assassinate Bob Marley - a violent, defining moment that sets off a chain reaction for a wide cast of characters. .

Read it if you like... social realism. At time more challenging then enjoyable, but definitely pays off the effort. .

Dream casting... Lakeith Stanfield as enforcer and Bertrand Russell fanboy, Weeper. Brian Tyree Henry as community/gang leader, Papa-Lo. Evan Peters as struggling journalist, Alex Pierce.

I had started the paper-book version twice but never got into the rhythm. I was, however, intrigued enough to get the audible version, and then the book opened up and enveloped me completely (probably to the point that i was speaking Jamaican in my head...). The patois on paper had me rushing to find out what it meant. Hearing it, instead, did not afford you the time and thus you just understood the context, absorbed it, and continued surfing the wave of the prose. And wave it is. James' prose is wonderful, the characters are rich, the story convoluted enough to keep you on your toes but ultimately not that consequential that , if you miss a connection, it makes much of a difference to the ride itself. Definitely one of the best books i read this year.

Impressive, but I can't say I loved the extreme violence. And the second half of the book becomes a story about drug gangs, and that's a lot less interesting than what appears to be a class and political struggle in the first half. But, wow, these characters. I read some and also listened to the audio version some, and I highly recommend that. The readers doing the Jamaican patois are outstanding.

I won't try to describe the plot of this huge novel, since the Goodreads synopsis does that perfectly well. The depiction of Jamaica in the 1970's as divided up between playgrounds for rich white tourists and battlegrounds for corrupt police, CIA operatives, and gangs run by the two main political parties, is like a dystopia. The book is appallingly violent. Most of the main characters are killers and thugs, yet I found myself liking some of them quite a bit, sympathizing with them.

The story is told through the voices of the people involved in it. Some people speak only a few times, but others come back over and over.

Bob Marley, “The Singer,” is at the center of the story. His influence endures throughout the book although his character dies only a third of the way through.

These are my random thoughts about A Brief History of Seven Killings. In short, I loved it. It's gripping. I heartily recommend it.

I came to A Brief History of Seven Killings after finishing James' Black Leopard, Red Wolf. While both novels are long, violent, and complicated, I much preferred the latter.

A Brief History of Seven killings comprises five parts, the first two of which take place over the course of two consecutive days, and the last three of which are separated from the first two and each other by years. A multitude of characters narrates the book, trading off perspectives each chapter, and what begins as a beautiful chorus devolves into cacophony by the middle of the book.

The first two parts, “Original Rockers” and “Ambush in the Night,” chronicle the events leading up to and immediately following an assassination attempt on Bob Marley. These sections are perfect. One could rip out the last 400 pages of the book and it would still be deserving of every accolade it has won. The blended and diverse narration is fantastic, connecting events on the streets of Jamaica to Cold War geopolitics.

I found the two middle sections, which deal with the drug trade in the late seventies and eighties, to be a bit of a slog. I love long books, and I almost always become more invested in the characters as I progress; that was not the case with this novel. Once the tension of assassination attempt breaks, the narrative bloats and becomes unwieldy. Additionally, in these sections, two of my favorite characters (the ghost and the CIA agent) were scantly utilized, understandably but regrettably. I did enjoy the last section, which includes a series of one-on-one encounters between several of the characters and does an excellent job of ending the book.

This is an amazing work of fiction that I highly recommend. The author weaves together an epic yet very personal story that spans decades and two countries, telling a story that begins with the failed 1976 assassination of singer Bob Marley and ends up with the 1980s crack epidemic in Brooklyn. The narrative connective tissue joining these two points is articulated by a shifting cast of characters from Jamaica, America and Cuba, among others. The plot is so well constructed and interwoven through the various characters' perspectives that the alternating voices never confuse, and always propel the story forward. And the voices are distinctive. I listened to the audiobook (with excellent narration by at least 5 voice actors) and I found myself frequently repeating pieces of the often musical dialogue. This book recently won the Man Booker prize and a host of praise. It is well deserved. This is a dense story that seems compact and tight, populated by three dimensional characters so rich and colorful that I feel like I know them. As I passed the halfway point of the book I found myself both wanting to hurry up to reach the end and see what happens and to slow down so that I could enjoy the pleasure of reading this book longer.
Now, off to read James' other work.

While I was reading the first part “Original Rockers” I thought about not continuing it, but instead of choosing another “booker winner” I decided to carry on with it even if it would've taken me a month or more to finish it.

The second part “Ambush in the Night” was more interesting. However the third part “Shadow Dancin” it started with Kim Clark , and since the writer decided to spend 38 pages on this character alone! As a result I read only 3 pages daily with a lot of patience, this character “Clarke/Burges/Palmer” needed only few pages as Demus.

Finally the fourth part “White Lanes/Kids in America” was epic, I enjoyed it and if the other parts were as enjoyable as this part it would've taken me less than a week to finish it.

I've read an article mentioning that HBO have a deal to produce it and I am looking forward to seeing it.

Hard, hard work but ultimately rewarding

OK I will come right out with this: I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as I expected to, and having given four and five stars to this authors first and second books, I am left with a sense of disappointment to only give it three and a half (four) stars. Booker Prize winning (2015) and highly rated by a lot of other reviewers, it has some great things going for it, and some that troubled my reading.

It is a long book, at a bit under 700 pages, and it contains a lot of characters. These are typically not problems for me. Each character who narrates a chapter (or chapters) has a unique voice - those who are Jamaican write as spoken in patois, using what seem realistic slang words and sayings. Again, this is not normally a problem for me, in fact it is a very appealing aspect of books by this author and Irvine Welsh, amongst others. I actually enjoyed this a lot, and I think it helps to key in the characters in the reading. It is also relatively violent, and contained some well scripted swearing - not that these features were concerning - in fact other readers had flagged these, and neither matched up to a level I had pre-conceived, so no concerns there. Then, of course there is the whole Bob Marley aspect. While this bumped up the appeal before reading, and the attempted assassination was a major event in the book, being referred to only as ‘the singer', and not really containing any real detail about Marley, this became a bit of a non-event, which is some ways was disappointing. Finally, some of the stream of consciousness ranting in a couple of the chapters just went on too long for me.

So what was it that made this only 3.5 stars? Firstly, I felt it was over-long - not in terms of page count, as that doesn't matter as long as the story is right - it felt over-long because there was peripheral information or content which just didn't feel necessary (to me). It is not in my nature to complain about this, or to dislike level of detail information, so this could be that I didn't put in enough effort into the reading, and perhaps these details would have come alive if I had concentrated harder, or was less distracted? Secondly, I struggled with some of the connections (of the characters) and relationships. On retrospect, I suspect this is purposeful from the author, as part of unravelling the web is solving the connection, but again - concentration is necessary to keep all the strings in mind.

There is also a fair bit of Jamaican politics in the book. Without an prior knowledge, there is enough explanation to feel your way through with a low-level understanding, but some personal research might have helped me understand (but I lacked the effort to do this). Also enjoyable was the strong female character, who was probably the most fleshed out of the characters, along with a couple of the bad men.

I am not heading down the road of talking plot or outline, there are too many other reviewers who have done so much better and more precisely than I would, so I will leave it at this.