Reading Well: A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

You will know if you will enjoy A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014) by the end of the second chapter. The first is told by a ghost, observing those involved in his own demise; the second is in a deep Jamaican patois that dominates the rest of the many hundred pages of Marlon James‘ sprawling, ambitious novel.

For many, the patois will be too dense and off-putting. For me, those first two chapters were absolutely intoxicating, generating a momentum that carried me well into the rest of the book. I don’t know if I have read as enticing a beginning to a longer work since the opening chapter of Wolf Hall.

And this is a long work: nearly 700 pages, covering several decades of modern Jamaican history, centering on the build-up to and the fall-out from a failed attempt on the life of Bob Marley (mentioned in the book almost exclusively as The Singer). The main characters are drawn from the Jamaican underworld, and the book is often quite explicit regarding violent, sexual, and drug-related activities. It’s also (usually) successful in sketching characters that are more than caricatures, and whose activities have complex and nuanced motivations–something often missing in fiction located in these contexts.

Substituting Jamaica for Baltimore, there are strong parallels between A Brief History of Seven Killings and The Wire: memorable characters engaged in a variety of ethically compromised situations set against a context that illuminates the complex interactions between governmental, industrial, and illegal organizations as they struggle with and against each other. There are two additional forces in play here as well: international relations that surround drug and industry trade (as well as development efforts) from Jamaica to the USA (and other countries in the hemisphere) and the presence of Marley, a larger than life figure whose shadow looms in the background throughout the story.

That said, The Wire is arugably the best long-form TV series of all time; A Brief History of Seven Killings is a very good book, and perhaps even a great one.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Have the courage to work in dialect/patois the way James does. The risks of alienating a significant portion of your audience are high, but he pulls it off, without being self conscious of it, without pandering.