A Brief History of Seven Killings (Booker Prize Winner): A Novel

by Marlon James

Winner of the Booker Prize

One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

One of Entertainment Weekly’s Top 10 Books of the Decade

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

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.

• ISBN10: 159448600X
• ISBN13: 9781594486005
• Publish Date: 2 October 2014 (first published 1 January 2014)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Riverhead Books,U.S.
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 704
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781594486005

Reviews

[clementine]

3.5 stars

I'm finding it difficult to gather my thoughts on this book. I enjoyed it overall, but it wasn't an easy read and I do have some problems with it. Its difficulty is a combination of many factors: its structure, its violent and graphic content, its use of language.

I really enjoyed reading a fictionalized version of the assassination attempt on Bob Marley (or "the Singer" as he's referred to in the book) and how it affected and was affected by Jamaican politics. There's a huge ripple effect which I thought was effective, as was the fact that the book followed its characters throughout the mid-1970s to early 1990s. Unfortunately I found the chronology a bit confusing at times; the novel is told in five parts, each corresponding to a single day, but the narration necessarily has to jump back in time constantly to fill in the gaps, so while you may be on March 22, 1991, the characters are also talking about moments from many years prior. The one day sections, separated by several years, don't quite work for me, though I like the idea in theory.

This novel is told from multiple viewpoints, which is a literary device that I don't always enjoy. I did think it was effective here, because it created a very thorough and holistic picture of Jamaica (and Jamaican immigrants in New York), spanning gang members, politicians, the middle class, a CIA agent, an American journalist... With the exception of the third section, all of the chapters are quite short, generally spanning about 5-10 pages, so the book switches back and forth between characters frequently. This can make it a bit hard to follow (especially because the perspectives are so different, it can give you whiplash), but I think it's a pretty effective technique. Because the use of language is quite deliberate and diverse - from Jamaican patois to American English to a combination of the two to certain characters slipping between them at will - the use of multiple first-person perspective did work for me. Unfortunately I found some of the characters more compelling than others, which is always the danger of this narrative style: you naturally latch on to some and read impatiently through the sections that don't interest you as much until you get back to the characters whose storylines you enjoy.

That said, I did enjoy a lot of the characters. Josey Wales was particularly well-written and interesting, as he's a master of slipping between personas and dialects. He's at once deeply disturbing and disgusting and quite compelling, clever, and charming. I also loved Nina Burgess; without spoiling anything, her storyline gets quite interesting. I enjoyed Alex Pierce's investigations and I thought Weeper was complex - I wish we'd heard more from him, particularly in New York.

Though this book is generally billed as a fictionalized exploration of the 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley (which is how I referred to it above!), I think it's selling it short to think of it just that way. The bulk of the book takes places after the assassination attempt, even after Marley's 1981 death from cancer. Yes, this event is central to the story, and a lot can be traced back to it, but I think it's important to note that it's also about foreign imperialism, the network of gangs in Jamaica, Miami, and New York, and diaspora. There's a lot going on here, which I think makes the fact that it's 688 pages long worth it.

This book is long and an ambitious undertaking on James' part for sure. I think he's mostly managed to succeed at telling this story the way he set out to tell it, but to me it's certainly imperfect. Certainly some of the difficulty of the book is due to stylistic choices, but I can't help but think that it just doesn't quite come together fully. That said, his use of language is masterful and the story is, overall, enjoyable. I just wouldn't recommend this one to those who are easily disturbed by graphic depictions of violence.

[pamela]

If there was ever a book that overstayed its welcome it was A Brief History of Seven Killings. Despite it being a prize winner and being so well reviewed I had to put this one down at 54%. I found the entire experience to be utterly underwhelming. I tried, I really did. I read 5% carefully. Got to 11% speed reading. Signed up for a free month of Audible so I could give the audio book a go. At 39% I tried speed reading again and then just gave up. Reading should be joyous. It can be hard work, but it should never feel like a job. Also, Brief?



That is not to say however that Marlon James is a bad writer. His prose is well thought out and there are some really poignant moments. What James seems to struggle with is self-editing. A Brief History of Seven Killings was at least 200 pages too long and had at least 3 too many characters, maybe even more of both. There was not enough difference between many of the character voices, and the content of what they were saying was so similar as to become repetitive. If a book makes you think 'shut up with the rape already' rather than being viscerally appalled at the prospect of it, then you know the work has failed on some level.

A Brief History of Seven Killings is a book about violence, poverty, abuse, power, and intrigue and yet I was bored. There is something wrong with that picture. I feel like prize winners these days are developed purely to suck the joy out of reading. They should make you think, or do something extraordinary with their genre or format. This book did neither.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

In the lead up to 3 December 1976 general election, Bob Marley planned to perform the Smile Jamaica Concert to help ease political tension. However seven gunmen from West Kingston stormed his house, although Marley did survive he had to flee the country the next day. Not a lot was said about the fate of the seven gunmen but there are whispers around the streets. A Brief History of Seven Killing is inspired by these events in a fictionalised oral history of what might have happened.

This novel spans three decades, spanning the political tension of Jamaica in the 1970s, the crack wars in the 1980s and the changing Jamaica in the 1990s. It also follows multiple narrators, with very unique narrative styles. One thing I loved about this novel is the fact that each narrator had their own style and you could easily work out who was narrating without looking at the title of each chapter.

A Brief History of Seven Killing is Marlon James’ third novel and has recently won the Man Booker Prize. I read this before the award was announced and I was really hoping it would win. I think there are so many interesting perspectives, exploring ideas of corruption, organised crime and even the CIA trying to control the fate of the country. I was interested in America’s involvement in Jamaica’s politics in an effort to fight the spread of communism.

One of my favourite narrators was Alex, a journalist for Rolling Stone Magazine. I thought he had the right amount of bitterness and sarcasm, making his narrative style stand out. All the other narrators are great as well, and I liked the way I was able to experience so many different angles of the story. There are over seventy different characters that regularly show up throughout the novel; it can be difficult at times to remember who is who, however I think Marlon James did a decent job helping the reader through this.

I have heard people compare A Brief History of Seven Killing to The Wire, but I compare Marlon James’ style as doing something similar to James Ellroy. I hear that HBO have brought the rights to make this into a show; this is the people who developed The Wire. I am glad to see that this novel is getting the attention from winning the Man Booker Prize. I really enjoyed the experience of reading this novel, even though this is anything but brief. I am curious to see what Marlon James’ other novels are like.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://www.knowledgelost.org/book-reviews/genre/historical-fiction/a-brief-history-of-seven-killings-by-marlon-james/