congratulations and ADORABLE!!

this book is a little challenging at the outset, but if you stick with it, you will be rewarded 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 un The Book of Night Women, there are many parts that are not written in dialect, and 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 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 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 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.

...............................................................................................

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

come to my blog!death-is-not-the-end distant-lands free-from-work684 s Adina 1,018 4,230

4.5* I have to subtract half a star because I almost quit at page 400. It got boring at that point but I am very glad I stuck with it. Although there were times when I was counting how much more was left in the book, it felt something will be missing from my life when I was finally done.

This was, by far, the most difficult book that I have ever read, although, I admit that I did not read Ulysses, Moby Dick or other books known to be a nightmare. However, I am pretty sure the book can be put in the same category, quality and difficulty wise.

So what makes it so challenging? First of all, half of its 683 pages are written in patois and at the beginning it is quite difficult to grasp. Secondly, each chapter is written as a stream-of-consciousness in the voice of a different character. Some are gang members, some are CIA agents, a reporter etcÂ…and even a ghost! The voices are quite different and it takes time to get used with them. The hardest is to follow the characterÂ’s thoughts when they are close to death or in a stressful situation. Then, the flow goes all over the place which makes the book so damn beautiful and hard at the same time. There is a index of characters at the beginning which is helpful but not enough.

However, the most challenging part was figuring out the context of the characters who were being spat at me, what were the relationships between the voices and all the other characters and also the events mentioned. It all comes together very nicely but I had to be patient and very attentive. Some characters/events might be explained 50 pages or so later.

The book tries to picture three decades of Jamaican history which include government conspiracies, gang movements, CIA involvement in the country. The first two parts take place around the 1976 assassination attempt of Bob Marley (called the "Singer") and the evolution of Jamaican criminality/politics in time, until 1991. The plot lines also take us to USA (Miami and New York) where Jamaican gangs were controlling the traffic of crack. As I knew absolutely nothing about Jamaican history, I had to do some research on Wikipedia and other sites. This is one reason this book cannot be rushed. I would not have understood anything if I had read this without googling stuff.

Although the book is about politics, CIA, murder, drugs it is not very fast paced until the last 250 pages which fly easily. Do not read this book if you do not violence and cuss words as it is full of both. The writer is amazing in inventing new ways of describing violence.

In the end, I didnÂ’t care that it was difficult to read. It was all worth it. I learned a lot of things about Jamaica and World history, I was privileged to read some amazing prose (even a bit of poetry), I was amazed by all the voices the author could create, I learned how to read patois (I even dreamt speaking the dialect one night). I will never forget this novel, I feel a richer person after finishing this so I believe he really deserved to win the Booker Prizebig booker favorites ...more463 s3 comments Barry Pierce589 8,017

When I open a book and see a lengthy character list I know I'm in for a wild ride. However Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings is more than just a wild ride, it's a brutal masterpiece that deserves its place as one of the best books of this decade so far.

James weaves a Dickensian plot around Jamaican history and culture. The entire plot is based on the events surrounding the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976. It's a fictionalised history of Jamaica from the 1970s through to the 1990s. I must admit that my knowledge of Jamaican history and politics and culture is laughably sparse. I'd tried ackee and saltfish once and didn't really it so I don't think Marlon James could have found a whiter canvas to paint his story upon.

I mentioned Dickens earlier because he's the only author whose work I can compare this to. A massive cast of characters, a hefty page count, numerous interweaving storylines but in the end it always comes together. This novel displays such mastery of plot and prose that I have not read since The Old Curiosity Shop or The Pickwick Papers. While this is essentially a very different novel it still harks back to and is possibly in the same league as these literary greats.

A Brief History of Seven Killings is never an easy read. From whole chapters written in Jamaican dialect to brutal murders and mutilations being described in minute detail. When Steinbeck discussed The Grapes of Wrath he said, "I've done my damndest to rip reader's nerves to rags; I don't want him satisfied". I feel this quote also applies to James and this novel. He is a brutal writer, the dots above the Is are bullet holes and stems of his Ts are sharpened and ready to kill. Blood imbrues the pages of this novel and you are always caught off guard.

As with many great novels such as this one there is always talk of literary awards and prizes wafting through the air. The most prominent to me is the Man Booker. At the time of writing, this novel is longlisted for the 2015 prize and I can say without hesitation that this is by far the runaway winner. I cannot conceive of any reason why this novel should not snatch the prize. If it does lose however it will go down in history as "do you know what actually won the year A Brief History of Seven Killings was longlisted?"

While some may be apprehensive and intimidated by its size, subject matter, and prose, I cannot urge everyone enough to pick up this book. A good novel holds your attention for a couple of hours, a great novel teaches you something. New cultures, new languages, new people. A Brief History of Seven Killings is a great novel.21st-century read-in-2015340 s Michael FinocchiaroAuthor 3 books5,808


Marlon James takes us through an insanely violent roller coaster ride where various actors in the drama surrounding the house invasion and assassination attempt on Reggae Uberstar Bob Marley's Kingston, Jamaica house in December 1976 tell the story in a series of Faulkneresque first-person dialogs (the author has mentioned the influence of As I Lay Dying on his writing of this book). It is based on the research of a team of researchers assembled by James. The book took four years to write and the story is both plausible and shocking and heinous. The gang violence in the Caribbean and in Jamaica (but also New York, Miami, Philadelphia...), the CIA's plausibly deniable involvement with drug cartels and interference with democratic (or demagogic) processes is all described in tantalizing, realistic detail. Each of the 12 first-person characters from Papa-Lo to the wordless Singer to the insanely violent Bam Bam or the psychotic Josey Wales or the way-in-over-his-head journalist Alex Pierce and especially Nina-Kim-Dorcas-Millicient were so realistic in their interior monologues.

The characters are so well-drawn and so realistic written in their own unique patois. This was my second ride on this merry-go-round and I bombaclot loved it. Again. The book is so big and so complex that I HIGHLY recommend a second reading to fully appreciate the links between the characters and plotlines, sort of I would also recommend for similarly layered masterpieces Conversation in the Cathedral, Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, etc.


It is important to note that before the action in the novel that many pieces have been set in motion: the battle between Manley's PNP and the gangs (Papa-Lo vs ShottaSherrif) is just heating up, Josey Wales had been shot in riots back in 65, Peter Tosh and Bunnie Wailer have left the Wailers and Bob with both Papa-Lo and ShottaSherriff are organizing a peace concert, the CIA has several agents on the ground as they suspect Cuban involvement on a political plane and the Medellin cartel is gearing up to dominate the global cocaine market. Also, shortly before December 3, 1976, Marley was spotted with the organizers of a major threat made on a jockey which resulted in an expensive horse race's result being changed. It is critical to note that there is no character that escapes James' lens and none of them are pure in spirit, some are even devoid of humanity.

The novel starts with an epilogue of an already-murdered politician's soul talking to us. This narrator then closes each chapter except the last one. Each chapter then treats a single day through the perspective on multiple narrators each named at the top of their sub-chapter. The patois of the Jamaicans and especially that of the gang-bangers takes some getting used to, but it is gorgeous and incredible how the painting of this moment in time - what led to it, who perpetrated it, and its far-ranging consequences - feels so real and engaging. The realism pulls the reader along and I in particular was breathless as I turned each page wanting to see what another character would reveal. If I were compare this to a painting (since others have borrowed the Tarantino movie metaphor already), I would say this works a series of Caravaggio paintings in heavy chiaroscuro where in the darkness we see evil characters coming out of the shadows, the flashes of knives and muzzles, the dark, thick pooling of blood while hearing the crowds shouting "Rastafari!!" among the scattered gunshots, we smell the ganja smoke and acrid burning smell of spent bullets, we taste blood in our mouths as we feel the impact of a fist on our cheeks...


Marlon James does not hold back on the violence of the gang world, of the homosexual encounters of several of the protagonists (and their own difficulties in accepting their sexual desires as genuine). I really loved the story of Dorcas and the old guy in the Bronx (my one regret is that this story just evaporates into the mists of time).


To truly understand the novel, one needs to know a little of the history of the rastafarian religion and of reggae music. Rastafarianism was born in the political struggles of Jamaica and has a strong identification with the fate of ex-slaves. It was closely tied to the Marcus Garvey-inspired Back to Africa movement (see the conversation between Nina and Kimmy early on). Ganja was used to get closer to the more mystical, spiritual aspects of the religion. I thought that one of James' themes in the novel was cultural reappropriation (particularly in the banter between Alex Pierce and the various people he interviews as well as Barry Diflorio) of rastafarian looks and reggae music as it became synonymous with the Jamaican Me Crazy t-shirts (referred to many times in the novel). The root messages of the anti-racist post-slavery movements have been all but forgotten with the appropriation of reggae-inspired cultural symbols which are now associated with hippies and weed.

That isn't to put Rastafarianism on a pedestal. James points out (when Nina talks with Kimmy about her boyfriend) that the culture was extremely sexist. The Singer slept with 1000s of women and had no women in matters of importance around him. When Nina goes to the Rastafarian house, the women are all subdued and waiting for orders from the men. This is a good place to point out another major theme in the book which was the prevalent violence against women throughout. It is one of the more disturbing things about ABF7K that so many women are raped, mutilated, and killed by Josie Wales and the various posses. This might put off some readers, but I think that James is trying to show that under the image of Jamaican Me Crazy and big doobies lies a history of violence in the impoverished neighborhoods of Jamaica which is almost beyond comprehension. We also see that Rastafarians were viewed by the older generation as stinking, lace-ridden fools (see Mr. Burgess reaction to when Kimmie tells him that Nina slept with the Singer).

James was clearly aiming at an unfiltered, raw look at some of the core issues in recent Jamaican history and letting the readers draw many of the conclusions on their own. The most important events are described by two or more characters to add depth and color to the descriptions. If you squint really hard, you might find some humanity in the Singer, in Nina, and maybe even in Weeper, but it is really hard to see Josie or Papa-Lo without an instinctive shudder.


I think that Marlon James has set the bar for post-modern fiction in this second decade of the 21st century, that his Man Booker Prize of 2015 was more than warranted, and that he is of supreme talent as a writer and impersonator in his writing. He alludes in his afterword that he had enough material for a second book. I will be the first in line for that one.

If you read anything this year, make it A Brief History of Seven Killings. It is truly masterful beyond just words. It is probably, without doubt, the book I have recommended the most in the last 6 months to others!

The audiobook on Audible is also 5 stars!booker-winners favorites fiction ...more246 s Petra on hiatus but getting better.Happy New 2024!2,457 34.7k

Update I've just watched Autopsy: Bob Marley. Watching the true story of the politics and events surrounding the attempted assassination on Bob Marley involving the CIA, made this book, even in retrospect, really come alive. The spin the author put on it, was the same conclusion as the documentary, although they were very circumspect about putting it. It doesn't matter whether you read the book or see the programme first, each adds to the other.
______________

I don't know how to review this book. It isn't any other book. It shares much in common with many others. Psychopathic criminals, corrupt politicians, the meddling of the US into foreign affairs, guns, gangs and girls who just don't matter. But it is so much more than the sum of its parts. It is the writing which soars brilliantly above all the five star books I've read this year except for The Book of Night Women, also by Marlon James.

Where it differs from all the other books is that Marlon James knows what goes on in a woman's head. He gets women completely and writes about us better than anyone I can think of. He gets our strength, our weaknesses, our absolute racing, manic thoughts and stupidity when dealing with matters of the heart that aren't going our way. You wouldn't really think that a gay, dreadlocked university lecturer would have that kind of insight would you? He displayed it to even greater effect in the historical novel, the Book of Night Women. That was the first time I felt I understood the mind of a slave woman, rather than the narratives of what they had to go through.

The story has more than one main character and story to tell, although all the stories are linked in a major way to the (true) story of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley. And it is only at the end that the story of one of the characters lightens and there is hope. And the hope is that you want to know more and would to urge the author to write another book about... continuing the story that has only just made sense and could have a new beginning. I don't want to even put it in a spoiler who it is and why it only makes sense at the end. It's too good even for that.

I do think the audio was one of the best audio books I've ever listened to, a play for voices (many actors) really, rather than narrated. I listened to it and also read the print book. I'm glad I listened to the audio first. I'm probably more familiar with Jamaican accents and language than most and even I found the words flowed better listened to.

If he keeps this up, he's going to be Jamaica's first Nobel Prize winner for Literature.

___________

Important note on background to the book which might help you to enjoy it even more than you probably would anyway. If you are thinking of reading this book, or have read it and would to know about the people and the events the book is based on, then read this from the London Review of Books, Goings on in the Tivoli Gardens. It's a long piece. Don't skip a single word.

This essay - it's hardly a review - is articulate and informative and only goes to emphasise the brilliance of Marlon James writing.10-star-books 2016-150- 2016-read ...more206 s Petra on hiatus but getting better.Happy New 2024!2,457 34.7k

I've finished the book at last. It is an incredibly long listen. You become involved in the stories of these Jamaicans, Cubans and Americans, dead and alive all acted out in the narration by actors who feel their parts. It is sheer genius and so I'm immediately reading the paperback. Once I've finished it, I'll review the book properly. Suffice it to say that it didn't resonate with me as The Book of Night Women did. It did take me, though, into a parallel universe that I have never experienced but often read and heard about, a favourite world of tv dramas and cop shows. Gangs, drugs, murders, the CIA, double agents.... And all of it presented it as recent history and reality and that's what it felt . Not tv drama, not fiction, but reportage. The story Alex Pierce was trying to tell.

Brilliant.
______

There is a scene in the book where a guy is with a male whore and he is describing in detail what he wants doing and how it feels and the other guy who is used to prison sex but not actually feeling it, describes what each stroke, touch, suck feels . I won't say it's erotic, it didn't turn me on, but I understood the sex, I saw what they d and got out of it. Genius writing.

This book keeps getting better. It's very strange to read a really amazing book with writing beyond anything you could imagine. And then it gets better.
______

When I read The Book of Night Women in early January, I confidently forecast it would be the best book I read that year. This one is on a par with it right now, maybe it is even better. The writing is dazzling. I've never heard stream-of-consciousness arouse emotions in me, I've usually been bored by it.

If I could do anything I wanted, I'd want to be a student in one of Marlon James' literature classes. I want to hear how he talks and explains books.

I keep saying it, but I do urge anyone going for this book to listen to the audio. It's a play. It's acted not narrated and if there were Oscars for audio books, this one would win it. I am rationing myself, I don't want this to end too soon...

btw The reason I do updates in the review box is because regular updates don't save and I want to be able to reread one day how I experienced the book as I read it, not just with hindsight.
_______

Previous update I want to tell everyone to get the audio book just to listen to this woman's stream-of-consciousness monologue. You know how it was when you got dumped and what went through your head, every way you could think of to reverse what just happened, to get him back, everything gets wilder and more unly, you try and distract yourself... you remember. This is a story so it moves forward but that monologue, how a man could have written that is beyond me, absolute genius. But I'm not sure if it would read as well as it sounds. The narration in general is brilliant but the monologue has you hurting for her.
_______

Change from hardback to audio I started to read the hardback and also listen to the book. I prefer the audio because it is a brilliant production. I think I will probably both listen and read it. We all have different things we look for in a book, and the most important thing to me is good writing. I could enjoy Marlon James for that alone. I did wonder if it could match The Book of Night Women, so far it does.

How I got into this very complex story and character list It took quite a while to get into the story, but I discovered that the best thing was not to try to make any sense of what fit where and why such and such a person was narrating that section. I found it best to just enjoy listening to the excellent narration/read the dialogue and then the story begins to wash over you slowly, the tide coming, until you are immersed in it. An interesting way of writing a story.
_____________

Short note on starting the book. I wonder if this can live up to the outstanding The Book of Night Women? I hope so.10-star-books 2016-150- 2016-read ...more193 s Sean Barrs 1,121 46.5k

IÂ’ve been reading this book for an entire year, and itÂ’s not been easy. At times I wanted to pull my hair out and scream, at times I wanted to throw the thing at the wall and be done with it, but I persisted. I made myself get to the end, and whilst I can say that I didnÂ’t entirely enjoy the experience, I do appreciate JamesÂ’ narrative style.

His deft manipulation of language is clearly the success of his storytelling. The way he writes reflects his characters. This may sound a simple idea, though in reality it is one of the hardest to pull off. The narrative reflects the feel of the characters on a macro and micro scale. He writes in a different style for each one, and itÂ’s superb: he brings their essence alive, who they are and what they sound . ItÂ’s a great technique, one that must be extraordinarily hard to master. This is, no doubt, the reason he won the man booker prize in 2015.

That being said though, I found the entire thing very difficult to actually read:

“anything you want to know about Kingston’s green versus orange war, everything you ever need to know about the rudeboy-cum-gunman is not in Bob Marley’s lyrics or in Peter Tosh’s but in Marty Robbins’s “Big Iron.” He’s”

You what?

Some passages were terribly strong in their dialects. More so than this. I love individualistic artistic expression; itÂ’s what makes literature so grand. I think itÂ’s wonderful that this has been written this, but, still, that doesnÂ’t make the process easier for me, personally, to read. Perhaps IÂ’m the wrong reader. Perhaps my own experience deemed that certain parts of the narrative were almost incomprehensible to me. Either way this was a struggle even if the experience was interesting. This isnÂ’t a novel that comes easily recommended.
3-star-reads contemporary-lit man-booker-prize-winners ...more135 s Baba3,733 1,136

First of all this book isn't brief but it's most certainly history; now that I've got that out the way, the only way my mind can summarise this book is that it's nearly 700 pages of first person perspective of 20+ character specific, many recurring, chapters of which a fair amount are almost stream of consciousness are you still with me? First person - multiple first person character specific chapters - narrated often from inside their minds mostly - and telling the story of Jamaica, or to be more exact the major characters connected to the failed assassination attempt of 'the singer' Bob Marley across several countries and three decades from the combative two-party political systems connection with crime, Communism and Cubans, and the CIA, through to the Crack Cocaine epidemic of 80s America!

What unfurls is indeed an immense work so finely tuned numerous voices, sentiments, ideologies, world-views in such a way that they truly feel genuinely individual voices from the gargantuan irrepressible almost demented criminal Josey Wales through to the convoluted world of the CIA agents hovering in and around Jamaica in the 1970s. It's a delightful that only reveals the story in deliciously episodic chapters from a single person's view. It's a story that does not water down the connection between Jamaica's combative two-party system and the criminal elements used to garner votes; it doesn't gloss over the world of 'the singer' and his impact on the local Kingston community, on the persecution of Rastafari, how the criminal underclass lived, on the base corruption of the police force or on the later desperate need to escape Jamaica for some. Yet even with countless negative takes on Jamaica the book itself is a testament to Jamaica in its immensity!

This Man Booker Prize, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Minnesota Book Award and OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature winner 2015 had such an impact on me, that a few hours before writing this review I'd returned from an impromptu drink with a Jamaican born friend so he could explain to me the path of Jamaica from World War II to the 1980s to help me better frame the book against real history. This is a book I already want to read again with my new knowledge, indeed the only criticism I can have of this book, is I feel, to truly enjoy and appreciate this work one really should brush up / learn about Twentieth century Jamaican history. Gwaaarn! 9.5 out of 12.

2022 readhistorical-fiction125 s Elyse Walters4,010 11.2k

Audiobook.....and physical book....

The story begins before the election the 1976 election. Thankfully Paul, my husband, listened to the first half of this book 'with' me. It was supportive to have conversations
together.

Fact-based story/Jamaica/Kingston
Crime, politics, graphic violence, ( including rape), graphic sex, hard core criminals,
Gangbangers, CIA agent, Rolling Stones, Teen- boy with his first gun, drug trafficking, more violence, more killing from 1976...to 1991.

Characters we get to know at the beginning of the book - drop off --( they were killed).
The names of all the characters are listed in the front of the book...(extremely useful for me). After listening to the audio first.....(I got the physical book to help me with the follow along with the audiobook. ( not the other way around).

One of the characters that came over to the states.. to Harlem. ( Josey Wales)... was the character who had me begin to understand why Bob Marley's life was a threat.
But this book is complicated - beyond devastating - yet often extremely engaging. The voices were piercing-dramatic at times....so real - so raw- absolutely riveting terrific.
Patois dialect is fabulous. I don't think I could have read this 'without' the audiobook's help. Following everything along with only the physical book would have made the experience harder - and more dry.
By listening to the audiobook, experiences of the graphic violence felt frightening. I was able to imagine being inside the criminals heads...( to begin to understand their years of anger and hopeless feelings).

Am I glad I invested time with this book? Yes! Is it ever uplifting? It's not!
yet...the voices were almost 'theatrical' ---piercing interesting---(as I already mentioned), and gorgeous sounding with their accents.
I was able to distant myself ( for emotional health), long enough to learn more about the the killings & politics of this country. Really sad!

Know...this is an extremely graphic book filled violence and hatred.



Michael655 960

Cinematic and epic in scope, A Brief History of Seven Killings takes a kaleidoscopic look at a country caught in crisis. Alternating rapidly between disparate perspectives, the novel centers on the attempted assassination of Bob Marley, referred to here only as the Singer, on the eve of his ‘76 national concert in Jamaica. In stream-of-consciousness prose James fully renders the inner lives of mercenaries, gangsters, intelligence officials, reporters, and civilians as they become ensnared in the plot to take the Singer’s life and struggle to contend with the fallout from the attempted assassination. All the while the writer sketches a vivid portrait of a nation roiling with political upheaval and warring factions. The sprawling novel’s easily one of the best of the century.2020 recs105 s Matthias107 373

A Brief History of Seven Killings should not be evaluated based on its supposed brevity, nor on the amount of killings featured in the book. The title could be the source of misguided expectations in this regard, as it is being overly modest on both counts. But if you're expecting a clever, fast, insightful, colourful and authentic novel, you won't be disappointed.

My first instinct when I see a book that has won a prize (in this case the Man Booker) is to have zero expectations of it. Even less. I usually tend to avoid those prize-winning novels, because I always imagine a stuffy jury of academics wearing woolen suits in August and greasy glasses on the tips of their veiny noses, deciding which high-brow book to call "brilliant". All this just to make the masses who buy the book feel a little bit more stupid while they try to make sense of the decision to give it such an award. I took my chances on this one, because the title alone already gave me the distinct impression this was going to be anything but stuffy. Needless to say -but I'm gonna say it anyway- I'm glad I did give this a chance. Even though I remained skeptical at first and I was looking for reasons to hate it, I quickly found out there were none of those, and instead I got an amazing ride in the Jamaican suburbs.

The strenghts:

- Characters: The cast of characters is quite big: gang members and cops, Americans and Cubans, addicts and reporters, the average Joe, the average Jane and an anything but average Singer. This impressive list is presented for later reference in the beginning of the book, which is very practical. This big list might seem daunting, but there is nothing to worry about, all the characters, especially the main ones who get their own voice as a narrator, are colourful enough and very distinct, in order to avoid any confusion. The one thing that binds them all: they're all smart in their own way, and they're all authentic. This is the first similarity with Quentin Tarantino's works I see: everyone is awesome. In the highschool cafetaria they'd all be sitting at the cool table, even though some hate each other.

My favorite character in the book is Josey Wales. I won't go into too much detail as to why, in order to prevent spoilers, but I will mention one aspect. He's the kind of guy who s to be underestimated when it comes to his intelligence, so he can use it to his advantage. But he also hates being underestimated, because he considers it an affront, and will react accordingly (he's a bit of a psychopath sometimes). Even though I'm not a psychopath, I recognized the sentiment vis-a-vis being underestimated within my former self. And it made me glad I changed, because the writer describes perfectly how tiring and flat-out insufferable such a person can be for other people.

Different perspectives are used, so many of the characters get several chapters that are narrated in their voices. A very good choice. Suffice to say: I have grown to love them all. There's a deep connection that is established with these characters, making for sometimes very heavy, sometimes cringeworthy, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes laugh-out-loud moments. You really "live" these peoples' lives, you even live their deaths in some cases, the immersion is complete.

- Dialogues: The second similarity with Quentin Tarantino's work: all the characters are upfront, witty and can always fit in a clever retort. They can speak their minds and do it very elegantly and with a wonderful sense of timing. Many of the dialogues, monologues and thought processes build up nicely to very juicy oneliners. I'm very tempted to write down all the oneliners I've copied, but having them in this review without the build-up wouldn't do them justice. I'll share a few, just to give you an idea:

"Jamaica never gets worse or better, it just finds new ways to stay the same."

"The quickest way to not live at all is to take life one day at a time."

"My mother is so afraid of trouble that trouble sticks to her close just because he never gets tired of proving a point."

"Besides, who trusts a man who drinks hot water with lime instead of whiskey or even coffee? What's next, peeing sitting down?"


- Setting: I had no idea about how Jamaica is or was during the seventies, or how the New York streets looked in the eighties and nineties, but I think I do now. I'm not going to double-check, but also according to the acknowledgements this is all very authentic and that's the impression I had gotten. I could almost smell the jerk chicken off the pages.

Aside from the locales, there is of course the setting of gang wars. Here I must warn the faint of heart: this book is not for you. This book gets extremely violent at times. Rape and murder are described in sometimes excruciating detail. Not just the violence gets this very detailistic treatment. There is a lot of sweet man-on-man lovin' in the fourth chapter that has forever changed my views on flowers blossoming in spring. Marlon James actually warns his mother not to read that fourth chapter. It is extemely explicit.

The presence of Death is overwhelming, which will be less surprising because that usually comes with the killings. This book opens with a dead person talking, by ways of introduction, which didn't strike a big chord with me at first. That intro actually left me completely clueless. But the way Marlon James gives the sometimes very recently deceased a voice is powerful beyond compare. You'll look into the minds of people about to die or just having died and I can tell you, those thoughts strike home.

- Jamaican Patois: The star of the book. Jamaican Patois with a capitalized "P" as far as I'm concerned. It's a beautiful language, that sadly I cannot emulate for you. As Marlon James himself repeatedly says, nothing makes a white boy sound more white than when he tries to "chat bad". I have found a review of someone who can do it very well (don't know her cultural background), but if you want an idea of what it sounds , check out this review by Nicole: Jamaican Patois in action.

Remember the violence so brutal and the lovin' so sweet it will make you diabetic just reading about it? Somehow, the Jamaican Patois all makes it more palatable. "Sufferah", it sounds all cool and light, but a dramatic meaning lurks behind it. Even their swearwords sound superheroes. Bombocloth and Battyman, to the rescue!!

This strength is a possible weakness though, marketing-wise: I don't think this book is translatable. I doubt it can be done without losing the all-important context of the story. The Jamaican Patois is the identity of this book, translating it into anything else would be equal to killing that identity.

- Plot: The plot is very reviting. The central element is an assassination attempt on "the Singer" (we all know who that is), but it actually isn't his story. It's the story "about the people around him, the ones that come and go that might actually provide a bigger picture than asking the Singer why he smokes ganja".

All the characters have their own struggle, and all of them are in danger of something. The central question: "Who will finish on top?" Everyone is striving for that top in their own way, by killing, seducing, negotiating, working until they realize that the "on top" usually means "on top of a pile of corpses" and they try to change directions, turning it all into a question of survival. This story is about that, but also the little things, a bad marriage (somehow I got the impression Marlon James doesn't really white women by the way), kids not being able to sleep at night or a jealous sister nagging on the phone.

I've upgraded my initial 4-star rating to 5 upon writing this review, realizing there aren't any weaknesses worth that name. Let's call them taches de beauté. Slight imperfections that make the whole more beautiful. The one thing that almost prevented me from putting this one on my favorites shelf is that sometimes the book made me work a bit too hard. I get that Marlon James put a lot of work in this, and I got the distinct feeling he wanted to make his reader put in the little extra effort too once in a while. When he explained the word "duppy" on page 526 (more or less) when having used it 77 times (more or less) earlier in the book, I was convinced that Marlon was having a laugh at my expense. Two more examples:

- With all the different perspectives and the rather high volume of pages, there is a lot of information to process. Sometimes they're unimportant details, but sometimes one of these details is referred to later on. At some point in the book, Josey Wales has to laugh because he hears "Ma Baker" being played on the radio. Now, you know as a reader that this is a reference to something earlier, an inside joke, because "Ma Baker" had been mentioned before, way way earlier in the book. But I couldn't remember exactly how, or in which context. And I couldn't find it again either, because with all these narratives intertwining, finding it would simply mean re-reading the book. So a joke went over my head even though it shouldn't have, and it annoyed me. I guess this is partly my fault, and probably the reward would have tasted all the sweeter if I would have gotten it, but it stings. I consider myself a fairly meticulous reader. So hereby a request: Anyone reading this review and able to fill me in on the joke will get another great joke in return!

- The streams of consciousness: I'm not against streams of consciousness in general, they usually make for a very immersive experience. But in this book those streams were the weakest part of the book, and sometimes aggravating. The reason for this is that whenever Marlon James chose to use this writing method, it was always when a character was either on a drug trip or in a panicky state. Having just read "A Scanner Darkly", I know this can be done much better. The fact that important information is sometimes included in the rants of repetitions, swear words and psychedelic experiences made this less pleasurable than it was probably intended. That said, I think there's a full total of 20 pages of these kinds of streams, so on a total of close to 700 pages this boils down to criticism equivalent to not liking the lay-out of the table of contents.

There, I've said it all. I just want to end on a positive note, because this book is definitely a must-read and has got all the potential to be a timeless classic, a book that people from faraway futures will be reading. Don't be one of those people though. Read it as soon as you can!favorites my-94 s Julie255 15

I remember school days painfully toiling over my Latin translations ...
and it all came back to haunt me with this!

Crikey, chinas! Thought I'd need the ambo! I was a cot case. At first I thought, she'll be apples. I'll give it a burl!! But then I realised my noggin was cactus! I was cheesed off and about to do my lolly. Fair crack of the whip! I had buckleys of sussing out the lingo! Thought I was a drongo! A no-hoper! But stone the crows!!! This was a stinker for me as a reader! A write off!

Seeing as idiosyncratic language is a literary winner, I can see myself writing The Great Australian Novel, chockers with the vernacular! But I will just start with this review (in the Great Australian Vernacular ... and at least I provide a translation ... see below)

If patois is defined as : a form of a language that is spoken only in a particular area, then I am not going to rate myself as a "fail" for not enjoying the struggle to read this! In fact, I didn't enjoy it so much that I didn't finish it!

The pigin dialect being used, the constant jargon of the language, was a struggle. And to further fracture the reading, the story itself jumped between points of view and the timeline. And close to 700 pages of unstructured language and plotline.

Clever? Maybe.
An effort to read? Totally.


Translation :
Good heavens, mates! Thought I'd need an ambulance! I was done in. At first I thought, it'll be all right. I'll give it a go!! But then I realised that my brain was broken! I was annoyed and about to get angry. Ease up! I had no chance of understanding the language! Thought I was a stupid person! An incompetent person! But wow!!! This was objectionable for me as a reader! A total loss!87 s Greg1,120 1,968

Rating this book is a little difficult. I think IÂ’m going to go with five stars, because it is quite amazing. There are a few small problems with the book, but they are the kind of problems that come from trying to be too ambitious, so itÂ’s not perfect but it is great. An ambition is a good thing to have.

Karen mentioned this in her review, and an unnamed person from Goodreads disagreed with her in person, but I think heÂ’s wrong. A Brief History of Seven Killings is a historical novel right out of the James Ellroy realm. I donÂ’t know if it is because Karen asked me if I thought this was James Ellroy when she was reading it a couple of months ago that it grabbed me almost immediately as being a maximilist cousin to the historical novels of Ellroy, but a strong argument could be made that this book is basically a Jamaican version of American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand.

For those two Ellroy novels the pivot point between them is Dallas 1963. The first book leads up to History and the second picks up moments after when trigger(s) have been pulled and what the results of that moment are.

ABHO7K can be broken up similarly, with an assassination as the pivot point between the two parts. The central action that explores the causes and the effects is the attempted assassination of Bob Marley (AKA “The Singer”, in this book) by a group of Jamaicans at his house in (1976?). The reasons for the assassination are complex, but they come down to the relatively simplistic way of putting it—he was upsetting the violent but stable Status Quo of the warring Jamaican ghettos by trying to bring some unity to the main two political parties in Jamaica at the time (who were also the supporters of the rival gangs). It was sort of the Tammany Hall era New York City and earlier but with automatic weapons and third world living conditions.

A break in writing the review came here for a couple of weeksÂ…

This has been a tough review to get going with. I loved the book. Part of me wants to point out the spots that I didnÂ’t as much, but they mostly come from comparing them to James ElloryÂ’s novels, which isnÂ’t fair. I think that Ellroy made some better choices in the execution of a novel of this type, but itÂ’s obviously not the only way to handle a historical novel of this type.

Marlon JamesÂ’s last book, The Book of Night Women, at the heart of this story is the corruption of lofty ideals. Here it is a little less murky since itÂ’s only some of the characters that would even give lip service to what they are going is for any higher good, while others are just out there for the money, the power, the high or because they just pulling the trigger. Where in his previous novel the violence that comes is of a revolutionary kind that is masked in the ideals of liberation for the slave population, here the violence initially stems from the desire for peace.

In my review for his previous book I’m pretty sure that I used some Crass lyrics as a jumping off point, and my aging mind thought that this was another Crass lyric that would be suitable, but it’s actually by a 90’s Connecticut Punk band with similar political leanings, The Pist… “if you want to talk about peace prepare to be ignored.” This is a lie, because talk about peace might make you be ignored by those with (not necessarily in) power, but if the talk has the tinge of being a reality those who profit from the the non-peaceful state will probably think about unleashing their violent ways on keeping their advantage. The protagonists of this story are mostly people who feed off of a non-peaceful state, and how profit nicely through the suffering the destruction of others.

Sitting in the middle of this book is someone whose music has never brought me any joy, Bob Marley. While IÂ’m not a fan of his, I really appreciated his phantom presence in this novel. HeÂ’s there in almost everything that happens, either directly because of actions he is taking or else from the fall out of the attempted assassination on his life. HeÂ’s a voice calling out for peace and unity in Jamaica while at the same time has a dark presence in the book that is almost as ruthless as the triggerman Josey Wales. The fact that heÂ’s there but almost never actually physically there in the story gives him a wraith quality that works in interesting ways with this book and its structure.

I would definitely recommend picking this book up. ItÂ’s probably one of the best books of this past year, and itÂ’s probably the only one that IÂ’ve read that feels itÂ’s a capital eye Important book. ItÂ’s not necessarily as tight as it could be, I think that the book could have had a bit more force if the number of points of view were cut down a bit in some sections and I thought that a few of the story lines were interesting but not necessarily that important to the overall structure, but those are really minor points and even for the one story line that I d but was a little baffled about why it was there, I still found moments in it where thematically added something of interest to the book.

ItÂ’s on the long side. Much of it is written with Jamaican slang that may be a little difficult to get into (and it was surprising to me to see how some of the words would be spelled, I was familiar with quite a bit of the slang from some JamaicanÂ’s IÂ’d worked with in the past) and if you are me and stupid about most of the world, the political environment of Jamaica in the 1970Â’s will also be a little tough to get a handle on at first. The book is also wonderfully brutal and violent, and there are scenes that probably arenÂ’t for the squeamish, but it never feels gratuitous. It never looks away from the ugly side.

So, yeah. Recommended. Possibly the best of 2014. fiction84 s Ahmad Sharabiani9,564 50

A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James

Marlon James (born 24 November 1970) is a Jamaican writer. He is the author of four novels: John Crow's Devil (2005), The Book of Night Women (2009), A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize, and Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019).

A Brief History of Seven Killings is the third novel by Jamaican author Marlon James. It was published in 2014 by Riverhead Books. The novel spans several decades and explores the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in Jamaica in 1976 and its aftermath, through the crack wars in New York City in the 1980s and a changed Jamaica in the 1990's.

The first part of the novel is set in Kingston, Jamaica, in the build-up to the Smile Jamaica Concert held on 5 December 1976, and describes politically motivated violence between gangs associated with the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People's National Party (PNP), especially in the West Kingston neighbourhoods of Tivoli Gardens and Mathews Lane (renamed in the novel as Copenhagen City and Eight Lanes), including involvement of the CIA in the Jamaican politics of the time. As well as Marley (who is referred to as "the Singer" throughout), other real-life characters depicted or fictionalized in the book include Kingston gangsters Winston "Burry Boy" Blake and George "Feathermop" Spence, Claude Massop and Lester Lloyd Coke (Jim Brown) of the JLP and Aston Thomson (Buckie Marshall) of the PNP.

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??????? ????? ??? ??? ????? ???? ?? ????????? «??????????»? «?????? ????» ???? ???? ?? ????? ?? ???? ???? ???? «??? ?????» ??????? ????? «????????» ?? ????? ??? ? ????? ?????? ????? ??? ???? ??? ???? ????? ????? ???? ???? ??? 2015?????? ??? ???

?? «??????? ?????» ??? ??? «?????? ????» ?? ?????? ??? ??? ?? ??????? ? «??????????»? ???? ????? ?? ?????? ????? ?? ?? «????????» ?? ???? ??? 1960?????? ?? 1990?????? ?? ?????? ??????? ???? ???? «?????? ????» ?? ??? ???? ????? ??????? ????? ?????? ?? ?? «?????????» ?? ????? ????? ?????? ?????? ??????? ?????? ?????? ????? ? ????? ???? ????? ? ???????? «??????» ???? «?? ?? ??» ???? ???? ?????????? ???? ????? ?? «????????» ?? ??? ? 1970 ??????? ? ????? «????» ?? ??? ? 1980?????? ?? «??????» ?? ?? ???? ???? ???????

???? ??? ??? ??? ????? ??? ??????? ???????? ?? ????? «??? ?????» ??? ????? ???? ? ???? ???????? ??? ????? ?? «??? ?????» ???????? ??????? ?? ????? ?? ??????? ?????? ????? ????? ? ?? ??? ??? ????? ?? ??? ??????? ? ?? ?? ?????? ????? ?? ????? ????? ????? ?????? ???? ?? ??????? ???? ??? ?????? ? ????? ??? «??????» ? «???????» ???? ????? ? ???? ???? ???? ?? «??? ?????» ??????? ?????? ???? ????? ?? ?? ???? ????? ?????????? ????????? ? ??????? ?????? ? ??? ????????????? ??? ???? ???? ?? ?? «??? ?????» ??????? ???????? ???? ???? ??? ????? ?? ???????? ?? ???? ? ????? «??? ?????»? ??? ?????? ???? ???? «?????? ????»? ??????? ??? ?? ?? ???? ???? ???? ??? ???????? ??????? ????????? ?? ?? ????? ?? ???? ?????? ?? ??? ?? ???? ???? ????????? «?????? ????» ?? ???? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ??? «??? ?????»? ?? ????? ?? ??????? ???? ???? ?? ???? ?????? ?????? «?????????»? ??????? ????

?????? ????? ?????? ???? ??? ?? ???? ?????? ???????? ?????????? ?? ???? ?????? ??? ??? ???? ? ????? ?? ?????? ?? ??????? ?? ?? ???? ???? ? ??????? ????? ??? ???? ?? ?????? ????? ?? ???? ?????? ?????? ?????? ????????? ???????? ?? ?? ??? ???? ?????: «????? ???? ?????»? «????? ?????»? «????»? «??????????? ????«? «????? ???? ??????» ? ...? ?????

?????????? ?? ???? «?????? ????»? ?? ???? ????? ?? ????? ??????? ?????????? ?? ?????????? ?????? ?? ?? ????? ??? ??????? ?? ???????? ? ??? ??????? ??? ??? ??????? ???? ?? ?????? ?????? ??? ?? ??????? ? ?????????? ? ??? ???? ???? ????????? ? ???????? ??? ?? ?????? ?????? ?????? ? ??????? ????? ? ????? ?? ???? ? ???? ??????

????? ?????? ????? 02/12/1399???? ????????? ?. ??????? Nicole~198 260

Meh still alive, y'hear? ...
Dem try an' try hard teh bus' me up, eh. Rahtid Papa-lo, Pavarotti, Weeper, an' Josey Wales wit him gang, what him say it name, Storm Posse? shadow dancin' on meh dem is Duppy Conqueror or somet'ing. Nasty political JLP and PNP crammin' dey rassclat dicks up meh pom pom an' use me hard some cokehead prostitute dey plant at de street corner, even dey bloodclat corrupt police make papapapapapa! across meh heart wit what you call it? dam AK-47 shit dey ship out here an' spread all over de place some gunland massacre for a Martin Scorsese movie. Tink we Jammin in the Name of the Lord when is the gun runnin' devils killin' we. When you try dat Godfadder shit on de Singer it juss backfire on you r'ass. Man, he only wail War louder an' louder, So Jah Seh "Smile Jamaica", an' so I did. De Positive Vibration heal meh a little but meh still in danger all de same.
Don't gain the world and lose your soul. Wisdom is better than silver and gold.
Meh can't truss dem stinkin' Dons, not a shot in hell meh tink dey gwan protect me. Jamdown in a bad, bad way Armageddon arrive. Guns, cocaine, ganja, money, power, revenge; de CIA, Medellin or what ya call dem Anti-Castro's: dey only want to ravage me battyhole, control me, rape me, slice me, burn me, bleed me. Meh life blood gushing outta me, bleeding oceans all the way 'cross to America. I shame, so shame. Meh own pickneys dem leave me to rot, but no, meh can't blame some dem neither. Marlon tell it true so. Him one o' me pickney dat got away an' me even tink he gwan win that prize, ire. Bombaclat, when all dis savagery 'pon me gwan stop? Dis wise Buffalo Soldier from Trench Town him had a message before him dead so young, him say:
Don't give up the fight.
Get up, stand up,
Life is your right.
Meh have a right, a right to equality and humanity; gwan fight hard rahtid to stay alive an' save meh soul.

Meh name Jamaica, see?
____________
Italics are titles or lyrics from Bob Marley's songs.cold-war gangs historical-fiction ...more77 s Mona522 330

Absorbing, Brutal, Brilliant Novel about Jamaican Drug Gangs and Bob Marley




Marlon James, born in Kingston, Jamaica, is a very gifted writer. And obviously, he can write about Jamaica with authority, as well as about Jamaicans in New York City.

So this is a pretty amazing book. It's really well written and packed with action and surprises.

But be forewarned. It's not for the faint of heart.

There's a lot of violence, which escalates in brutality towards the end. (I was able to deal with it, because it was contextual. I mean, the book is about Jamaican drug gangs and the title is A Brief History of Seven Killings, so of course there is a lot of violence. It didn't feel it was violence for it's own sake, or that it was being savored, as in I Am Pilgrim, which I couldn't even bring myself to finish).

There's also lots of obscene language, much of it in Jamaican patois. I was delighted to learn how to curse in Jamaican! Bombocloth! Bloodclaat!

There are also a few sex scenes, most of them depicting gay male sex.

So if any of this type of thing bothers you, you'll want to skip this book.

But then you'd be missing a very absorbing novel.

In spite of the title, it's not "brief". It's quite long, more than six hundred pages, but given its scope the length feels organic.

Although a Jamaican character makes fun of a white character who says something similar, I've got to say that the language the Jamaicans use--even when they "chat bad" or speak crudely, is pure poetry. It's not just the lilting Jamaican accent, but also their distinctive use of words that makes it so.

The sprawling story has several timelines and locations, and a large and varying cast of characters. There's even a ghost, Sir Arthur George Jennings, a fictitious murdered white Jamaican politician, who reappears at various points in the story.

There are lots of point of view narrators, too many to list. Each chapter is told from the point of view of a different character. However, some of the main point-of-view characters include the young Jamaican woman mentioned earlier, Nina Burgess; an American journalist, Alex Pierce; gang dons Papa-Lo and Josey Wales (named after a character in an American Western movie) ; Barry DiFlorio, the CIA station chief in Jamaica; Weeper, a gang enforcer who works for Josey Wales; Doctor Love, a Latino explosives expert trained at the infamous School of the Americas; Bam-Bam, an adolescent gang member; Tristan Phillips, a Jamaican inmate at Rikers Island in New York; and John-John K, a young American hit man.

The young Jamaican woman goes by the name of Nina Burgess--her real name---here---but changes her name--several times--later in the book. But that only becomes clear as one reads on, as we aren't directly told about her name changes; the reader has to figure it out

Marley is depicted as a man of great vision, but also a human with his faults and failings. I thought James' view of Bob Marley was pretty balanced. He didn't deify the man, while at the same time treating him with great respect. He also sprinkles excerpts from Marley's songs throughout the text, so it helps if you are familiar with Bob Marley's lyrics. Marley is not one of the novel's narrators, and thus, his actions and speech are always related third hand by others. So at the same time, he is the central character and a very peripheral one.

I loved the varying points of view and the distinctive voices of the different characters.

The first two sections of the novel, "Original Rockers", December 2, 1976, and "Ambush in the Night", December 3, 1976, take place largely in Kingston, Jamaica.

A lot (although not all) of these sections centers around the escalating gang violence in Kingston (much of it because of alliances with conflicting political parties, the conservative JLP or Jamaican Labor Party and the Socialist PNP or People's National Party) and a failed assasination attempt on Marley's life (he is referred to only as "The Singer", but it's pretty clear it's Bob Marley, the international Jamaican reggae star). The assasination attempt really happened, and it's very possible the CIA was involved. A group of gunmen attacked the Marley compound on Hope road, but no one was killed, although several in Marley's party, including his manager, were injured.

However, Bob Marley and the Wailers played the big peace concert, Smile Jamaica, which was planned for December 5, anyway, even though M
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