A Brief History of Seven Killings
2014 • 688 pages
Ratings23
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings23
Average rating4.3
Winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize One of Entertainment Weekly's Top 10 Books of the Decade One of the Top 10 Books of 2014 – Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times A “thrilling, ambitious . . . intense” (Los Angeles Times) novel that explores the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in the late 1970s, from the author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf In A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James combines brilliant storytelling with his unrivaled skills of characterization and meticulous eye for detail to forge an enthralling novel of dazzling ambition and scope. On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert to ease political tensions in Kingston, seven gunmen stormed the singer’s house, machine guns blazing. The attack wounded Marley, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. Little was officially released about the gunmen, but much has been whispered, gossiped and sung about in the streets of West Kingston. Rumors abound regarding the assassins’ fates, and there are suspicions that the attack was politically motivated. A Brief History of Seven Killings delves deep into that dangerous and unstable time in Jamaica’s history and beyond. James deftly chronicles the lives of a host of unforgettable characters – gunmen, drug dealers, one-night stands, CIA agents, even ghosts – over the course of thirty years as they roam the streets of 1970s Kingston, dominate the crack houses of 1980s New York, and ultimately reemerge into the radically altered Jamaica of the 1990s. Along the way, they learn that evil does indeed cast long shadows, that justice and retribution are inextricably linked, and that no one can truly escape his fate. Gripping and inventive, shocking and irresistible, A Brief History of Seven Killings is a mesmerizing modern classic of power, mystery, and insight.
Reviews with the most likes.
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.
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.
