Deacon King Kong

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / McBride, James	4-week checkout	Due 05-17-2024
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / McBride, James	4-week checkout	Due 05-17-2024

"From James McBride, author of the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, comes a wise and witty novel about what happens to the witnesses of a shooting. In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .45 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride's funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird. In Deacon King Kong, McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood's Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself. As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters--caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York--overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion. Bringing to these pages both his masterly storytelling skills and his abiding faith in humanity, James McBride has written a novel every bit as involving as The Good Lord Bird and as emotionally honest as The Color of Water. Told with insight and wit, Deacon King Kong demonstrates that love and faith live in all of us"-- Provided by publisher.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

4.5 stars submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 18, 2021, 9:31pm 4.5/5 stars The first few chapters of this novel were a bit of a slow roll for me as I got to know the characters and became familiar with the neighborhood, but as the threads started to develop and layer, I was completely hooked. Reading this book was kind of like going down the first hill of a roller coaster… it just kept picking up speed. I loved the characters (although the two men’s pining for imagined-perfect women was gag-worthy… I’m knocking it down ½ star solely for that), the neighborhoods were colorful and believable, and the ‘mystery’ was delightful. The narrator took us into various first-person viewpoints smoothly and in ways that made the story more engrossing. By the end, I couldn’t put it down.

Can be a complicated read submitted by flemingj on June 28, 2021, 10:26am 3.5/4 stars I see why this book is so popular and certainly appreciate the quality of the writing. I ceratinly recommend not doing the audio version to better understand the story.

Great book submitted by bcartm01 on June 14, 2022, 8:38pm I found this book on Obama’s reading list and definitely am glad I did. I really got sucked into the author’s writing style and appreciated how the story unfolded throughout the book. I recommend this one for sure.

Enjoyed this book the further into it I got. submitted by bookher on July 4, 2022, 10:08am I do wish I'd read the book instead of listened to the audio version because there are so many characters that it was difficult to keep track of who was connected to each family and in the book I could have referred back to double check which isn't easy in the audio version. This was the first James McBride book I've "read" (listened to) and really love his writing style. So much so that I then listened to The Color of Water which is the true story of his life and really mostly his mother's life. What an amazing family! I loved listening to the Color of Water and am glad I listened to the audio version.

Valuable addition to the canon of American literature submitted by robinpollak on August 6, 2022, 8:29pm I agree with other reviewers that this book started slowly, and it was a little hard for me to get into. There's a long list of supporting characters, and only a few are well developed. This made it hard to connect initially but also helped develop the world of the book as a whole, where lives were hard and people didn't open up easily. The effort it takes to get to know characters by reading all the way through the entire book is part of the beauty of the writing. The ways the multiple storylines are intertwined is delightful, even as the world of the characters is a difficult place to live. It takes amazing talent to weave a whimsical story about drug dealers and mafiosos in the Brooklyn Projects of 1969. But James McBride manages to capture how life anywhere, all the time, is full of contrasting emotions and dimensions; the tensions between exhaustion and hope, how it's been and how it might be.