A Brief History of Seven Killings

by Marlon James

[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.