A Brief History of Seven Killings

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