Deacon King Kong

All the stars. I loved every single second of this audiobook.14 hours that I truly savored and didn't want to end. I laughed and smiled and shook my head and cathartic cried. James McBride & Dominic Hoffman - this writing, this humanity, this story weaving and performance - thank you, this is a masterpiece.

I had fun with this, it was full of character and even had a good handful of scenes written in such a way that they played out really well cinematically in my mind's eye. I find myself without too much to say about it, I enjoyed it and I might read something else by McBride now, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend running out to eat this.

Despite three library extensions, I couldn't prioritize this one. Would love to return to it sometime.

4.5

Bit of a roller coaster: starts off pretty awful, with characters who are tedious unselfaware automatons. Then a quarter of the way in it gets promising, with hints of inner life, complexity, nuance — not really believable, but I felt willing to go with it — and then it just seesaws back and forth, with moments of lucidity and reflection amid a baseline of vapidity.

There's romance: two independent (and laughably improbable) love-at-first-sight tropes. Slapstick: the multiple last-minute escapes from the hired goon are played for humor, right? Intrigue, and Preaching, and Flawed But Basically Decent People, and a Nice Pat Wrapping-Up at the end.

It was almost three stars, but the frequent pattern of characters Mutually Understanding Each Other wore me out. That's adolescent wishful-thinking connection, not messy real-world connection.

What an awesome audio book. If you have a road trip coming, this would make for an excellent companion. The characters are rich, the scenes vivid, the humor just right and the pace perfect. I didn't want this book to end.

Loved every minute.

I love James McBride's writing style. Every word is intentional and although not that easy to skim, it really forces you to slow down and take in every word. He's gifted in how he makes such FUN, memorable, and quirky characters. This was a unique read that I found delightful, especially the ant subplot.

Deacon Cuffy “Sportcoat” Lambkin walks out into the plaza of the Causeway Housing Projects, bombed on homemade King Kong and shoots 19 year old drug dealer Deems Clements' ear clean off. Despite not remembering a thing about the incident, Deacon “King Kong” is clearly a dead man walking.

Despite its pulpy start, this is really a golden hued memory of growing up in the projects in the late 1960's. While Spielberg defined the 80's in suburban America, this is McBride's recollection of growing up in Red Hook Brooklyn where his parents founded the New Brown Memorial Baptist Church.

It's a vibrant multi-cultured community where the Irish cop is honest and in love with the black minister's wife, where the Italian smuggler wants nothing more than to settle down with a plump wife but still lives with his mother who gardens with the drunk black deacon. Where the Dominican numbers runner is honest and the drug dealers leave the plaza empty till noon so the churchgoers can gossip around the flagpole.

It's also about second chances late in life and the possibility of love. It's a far warmer story than the opening would have you believe and in McBride's hands that's still a great thing. Throw in a McGuffin or two, some botched assassinations, some miracle cheese and an army of red ants and you've got a rose coloured recollection of growing up in the Brooklyn projects from an accomplished storyteller.

I had to do this one on audio because I'm still 4 weeks out on my library request for a print/e copy. Note-also, I had to work a little to get into this one because we meet a whole bunch of characters right away and it took me a minute to get everyone and the setting straight. Then I settled into it. My only gripe was that it was a bit too long. I was fatigued in the middle. This is one of the first times I read something where the subplots were driving the story more than the main plot which is pretty much summed up on the back cover. Rest assured everything snapped into place in the end. There were some laugh-out-loud moments in this book that made my day. Around the mid-point it finally occurred to me the book this reminds me of the most: [b:Cannery Row 4799 Cannery Row (Cannery Row #1) John Steinbeck https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388188936l/4799.SX50.jpg 824028]. Here we have a story told with a nostalgic charm that is filled with unique characters in a story that is deeply, deeply American.

I suggested this for my book club. None of us finished it by the time we met last week. This just didn't work for me - there were too many characters and I couldn't keep everyone straight, and it took me too long to get through it so I kept forgetting who people were or what their deal is. McBride is clearly a very good writer at a sentence level, so I would give his work another shot, but otherwise I'm thinking I just might be the wrong reader.

*4.5 stars. What characters. What descriptive and unique writing. What a depiction of race and class and New York City in 1969. What a great ending. This book is special and I am predicting it will be a contender for some awards. It should be.