A Brief History of Seven Killings

It's unfortunate that this book coincided (and partially caused) my long reading slump this summer and autumn, as I do genuinely think it's an interesting and worthwhile read, focussing on themes and ideas I'm generally interested in, particularly with the linking of poverty, political corruption, US interference and organised crime. For me, it's some of the stylistic choices that hamper it for me, in particular the reliance for portions of the character points of view on stream-of-consciousness. Catch me in my early 20s and I'd be all over it, but as I've matured I think that style of writing can be impactful in small sections, but when elongated over 20, 30 pages is ultimately detrimental to my interest in it.

Let us begin this review of A Brief History of Seven Killings as we should. With a glib remark on the irony of the title? No. With a plot synopsis? Negative. With a review of the author's biography, previous work, and general critical standing. Stop. None of this is what matters. No, let's begin right where we should and state the objective fact: A Brief History of Seven Killings is just Marlon James absolutely flexing on everyone.

PROSPECTIVE READER: Marlon, surely you won't write two-thirds of the book in varying depths of Jamaican patois?
MJ: Yes, I think I will.
PROSPECTIVE READER: Ok, but obviously you wont end a section of the novel with back-to-back-to-back-to-back chapters of gangbangers being fed cocaine and having their nascent addictions leveraged to coerce them into murder?
MJ: Absolutely I am going to do that, yes.
PROSPECTIVE READER: Stream of consciousness first person accounts of the deaths of those same addict gang members?
MJ: YOU KNOW THIS.
PROSPECTIVE READER: But surely it would be too much to include frustrated CIA agents, floundering American magazine journalists, and cryptic Cuban terrorists?
MJ: LIGHT WORK SON.
PROSPECTIVE READER: Do you really think you can weave a seven hundred page tapestry of dozens of characters around the figure of Bob Marley, only never call him Bob Marley, call him simply “The Singer”, somehow making him both the central figure of the book, but also less a character than a spirit haunting the spaces between the characters, the chapters, the words?
MJ: HOLD MY BEER.

A Brief History of Seven Killings brims with style, with skill, and with ambition. It's more self-assured than a debut and overflows with the audacity of a young author drunk on the discovery of his literary powers. Could it be shorter? It could be. There are one or two extraneous characters and threads of story. Still, these are minor quibbles given the book's overarching excellence in voice and affection.

It is long, and it can be difficult, but it is artful and it is rewarding. Find yourself feeling warmly towards horrible, murderous men. Find yourself tangled in the life and mind of Nina, the complicated female lead. Find yourself using pidgin profanities like “bombocloth” and decrying minor inconveniences as “Babylon business”. Find yourself between the pages of A Brief History and find yourself thankful for it.

4.5/5

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.

Parts of this book were great. Little hints at how each characters' story overlapped make you feel like a genius figuring them out.

But overall I had to force myself to finish it. The one important female character hated every other woman she came across in a really annoying way, the stream of consciousness writing style was meandering and often felt pointless, all the slurs and CONSTANT talk about rape felt more like an attempt to shock than an attempt to really say anything.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

There's a natural mystic
blowing through these page
if you read carefully now you will gauge
this could be my first man booker
but will not be the last
many more will have to read
many more will have to try
do ask me why

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.

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.

Hard, hard work but ultimately rewarding

Let me start by saying this is one of the most misleading titles I've come across in my many years of reading. No, this is the most misleading title. First of all, there is nothing brief about A Brief History of Seven Killings. It is brief compared to Infinite Jest or War and Peace perhaps, but not by much. Not only is this a long book, but the language and structure make it feel much longer than its nearly 700 pages. Secondly, seven killings? I just know that someday someone is going to count every killing in this book and that number is going to be way more than seven. I'm tempted to do it myself, but I know I'd hate myself afterwards for actually taking the time. I'd guess that if you added up every killing mentioned, whether it be in the primary plot or in backstory, there would be closer to 150. So yeah, a brief history of seven killings, my ass.

Ironically, the title's inaccuracies highlight the two qualms I had with this book. First, that it seems unnecessarily long. This is especially true in the first half. Once the rhythm is established, the characters solidified, and the patois is deciphered, A Brief History... takes off, but it still seems longer than necessary. The second issue I had was that it was much too violent for my tastes. Sure, we're talking about some Big Don/Mafioso kind of story here, so it's expected, but my anabaptist sensibilities can only handle so much rape, dismemberment, and explosion of faces. I don't watch Tarantino films or subscribe to HBO for a reason; if this book were adapted for film I would not watch it.

Length and personal feelings about violence aside, A Brief History of Seven Killings isn't a bad novel at all. Its greatest strength surely rests in its skillful implementation of voice. Many characters are given time to tell their respective story in these pages, and Marlon James nails each. At first, it may be difficult for the reader to follow the Jamaican verbiage and the stream of conscious pattern some of the characters use, but stick with it and you will be greatly rewarded. From CIA agents to drug-addicted thugs, from kingpin of the mob to a journalist who knows “the real Jamaica,” James expertly gets into these characters brains and makes their words resonate. I'd have liked to have heard more from the victims and more from female characters, but I suspect the author had his reasons for only skimming the surface in regards to these perspectives. Even though this story mostly focuses on the powerful, there is plenty of pain in this novel; everybody hurts sometimes, even heartless killers.

Like the dialogue and the characters, the story is all over the place. It spans decades and places and subplots. Like much of this novel, if you stick with it, it mostly pays off in the end. I guess that's the briefest possible way I can sum up this novel: it's challenging, but it largely pays off if you persevere.

Of the three Man Booker finalists I have read so far, this is my favorite. I don't think it has quite the magnitude and appeal required of the winner (I'm hoping one of the other three I have yet to finish show that), but it is a worthy finalist. Certainly, Marlon James is an author I will return to and one that will probably be up for many awards throughout his career.

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One question I have, more as a footnote, is why write a book about a famous person, make it obvious whom you're writing about, but never mention the person by name? Referring to Bob Marley always as The Singer was slightly irritating. Other real people were mentioned in this book, people who are still alive and have more power than Marley had, and James said more slanderous things about them, so it doesn't seem he did so to protect himself. Is The Singer some kind of homage to Marley? Personally, I didn't like it. At least not in the dialogue. The Singer this, and The Singer that. I would've been like, What bomboclot singer are you pussyholes talking about? (Oh yeah, you'll definitely pick up some Jamaican slang if you read this novel.)

I picked this up after reading the blurb in the library. I wanted it to be really good, but it turned out only okay. At 700 pages, it's probably about 200 pages too long, and some of the middle sections are a bit flabby. There are also characters whose storyline appears to just peter out, almost as if they were forgotten about, but an afterword does suggest that there's a second book on the way, so I will reserve judgement on that. I was alsodisappointed that a book set for two thirds in mid to late 70s Jamaica and then early 80s New York had so little focus on with music. It's not all bad though. The depiction of the Jamaican ghetto is very evocative, and the different narrative voices are really well handled. There are also some great set pieces - the crack house scene is a fantastic piece of writing.

I'm glad I read it, but it won't be the best book I read this year.