Reviews with content warning for Physical abuse - A Brief History of Seven Killings

Basically a masterpiece, but there’s something just stopping me from giving it 5 stars. It’s just a little too long winded, a little too confusing at times, but still one of the most well crafted books I have ever read.

I’m in awe of James’ writing style, how he effortlessly switches between the myriad of characters and still makes it easy for us to go with the flow, picking up a new voice and way of storytelling that never feels out of place from the previous chapter.

This was honestly not what I expected, and not what I assumed going into it - I did think there would be more emphasis on Bob Marley, as that’s definitely how the book was marketed. However, the lack of “The Singer” didn’t even let me down, as every other character was so absorbing that I never felt I wanted any less of them all.

Sometimes the politics and economics was all a bit much, but maybe that’s just me as someone who has no idea about most of any of what was mentioned. I feel like I learnt a lot about Jamaica and its politics and people and the 70s/80s and drugs/gangs etc in America as well. It definitely kept me hooked throughout.

And even though most of the characters were awful, evil people - I ended up liking so many of them, or at least feeling attached to them. Especially Weeper. And definitely Nina Burgess (and all her many other names). Every character felt very real and alive to me, and because I’ve been reading this book solidly for like a week now, I honestly think I’m going to miss this world and it’s inhabitants now I’m not with them anymore.

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emmanicoleman's review

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challenging dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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mepresley's review

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challenging dark informative tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

An incredibly dark and ambitious book that, despite being cover to cover full of violence, is sometimes lyrically beautiful. I’m always impressed with a book that is able to present an unlikeable protagonist in a way that still keeps the reader invested, and this book has a lot of POV characters, only one of whom I would consider remotely likable, but all of whom I found completely engrossing. Each voice is distinct: from high-ranking gang members (Papa Lo, Josey, Weeper) to expendable gang members (Bam-Bam, Demus), to the CIA (Barry Diflorio, Jamaican station chief), to journalist (Alex Pierce), to bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time (Nina), to hit man (John-John K), to Rikers inmate (Tristan Phillips), to the ghost of a politician (Sir Arthur Jennings). I would have liked to have

more than one female voice, for sure.

Spanning from 1976 to 1991,

the attempted murder of Bob Marley, here called only the Singer, to the death of Josey Wales, the man who pulled the trigger and propelled himself to the position of untouchable don in Copenhagen City, and then managed to fuck it all up so badly that he was burned alive in his prison cell. I have to admit, I cried at the exchange between Josey and Doctor Love, particularly when Doctor Love told Josey he was disobeying orders just this once and gave Josey the pills so he wouldn’t feel what was happening to him. I was also very touched by Weeper’s death, the genuine connection between him and the begrudging assassin John-John, who held Weeper as he died and did Weeper the final kindness of letting Weeper think his boyfriend was alive.

The title works on two levels—first, it traces the deaths of seven of the eight men involved in the assassination attempt on the Singer; second, Alex Pierce’s article on the crack house shooting the is the undoing of Josey Wales focuses on seven of his victims. (However, the title doesn’t make any sense until the end of the novel, really, and there are so many deaths in the book that until you’ve read like 670 pages, it’s natural to feel kind of bewildered which ones are meant to be the “seven killings”)

The novel is divided into 5 parts, in each of which the narrative action takes place over the course of a single day: Dec 2 1976; Dec 3 1976; Feb 15 1979; August 14 1985; and March 22 1991. Ultimately, while this was an interesting choice that mostly works, it comes across to me as style for the sake of style in a way that hinders the story. I was also often frustrated with where & how James broke off the chapters.

For instance, what the hell happened after Nina lit the bedroom on fire after Chuck told her that he was married and not bringing her back to the US?

So much that feels worthwhile falls through the cracks, and sometimes

—especially with the scene where Alex kills Tony Pavarotti—the single-day approach necessitates a lot of exposition in ways that feel forced.

There are places where I was more confused than I really should have been to enjoy the narrative, too.

Why did Mark Lansing bring Alex to the Singer’s house that night and leave him outside? Why didn’t Josey shoot Nina that night, or ever seem to spare a single thought about her, much less try to find her? She saw his face, heard his name. It was hard for me to understand exactly what happened with Papa Lo’s death and I’m not sure why it was presented like a hallucination of the future. How did Barry have no idea what was happening in Miami with Louis Johnson and Doctor Love and yet wrote the book that had William Adler losing his shit? Why did Weeper choose to go out that way? More than that, because I understand nothing about coke or injecting it, until much later —Josey’s conversation with Doctor Love in one of the final chapters, in fact, I didn’t even get whether his OD was accidental or not. Also, was Weeper using crack or did Eubie make that up?

And why did the first four sections of the novel have chapters titled with the character names and the final section have numbered chapters? It really made no sense except

for the moment of reader surprise when you realize Doctor Love is narrating chapter one, and only at the tail end of the chapter when he is face to face with Josey. That’s kind of what I mean by choices that prioritize style at the expense of content.

James is a great writer and I absolutely want to read his other work. There’s well-written dialogue and action, the story is pieced together from these diverse narrators in a way that works (outside of what I already observed), locations are brought to life, and the characters are fantastic. I even feel like I learned a lot about a particular point in Jamaican history. Had I not stopped part of the way through and teased everything out through detailed notes, I probably would have been very lost for a long time, though. The character list was helpful. A map would also have been useful for me.

Two semi-random notes: I didn’t care for the Sir Arthur Jennings chapter on

the Singer’s funeral, which seemed incredibly out of place between the 1985 and 1991 sections of the book, especially because the 1979 section ends with Jennings on the Singer’s death.

And I kind of loved Alex

getting the shit beaten out of him for that stupid article he was writing; he just really seemed to be asking for it the entire novel in one way or another.

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maddsienicole's review

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challenging dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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panoptican's review

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challenging dark informative sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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chalkletters's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

At some point, I must have read a review of A Brief History of Seven Killingswhich intrigued me enough to buy the book, but I no longer remember it. A brief look online didn’t provide much in the way of clues as to why I thought this would be enjoyable. The historical context of an assassination attempt on Bob Marley was completely unfamiliar, and the phrase ‘crack wars in New York City’ not exactly promising for an entertaining read.

Marlon James’ style feels intentional; each character has a different voice, using 'the Singer’ instead of Bob Marley’s name elevates him to a mythic figure and the stream-of-consciousness changes to reflect the emotional and mental states of his characters. Unfortunately, going in with no prior knowledge of events combined with vast array of narrators and the overload of detail made it difficult to pick out which people and events would prove to be important. The narrative is hard work for an uninformed reader, especially the middle section where the chapters are long enough to feel exhausting.

A Brief History of Seven Killings is also, as is to be expected, incredibly violent. As well as the advertised assassination and drug wars, there’s a lot of background violence, both sexual and otherwise, which certainly didn’t lighten the emotional load any. The Gallows Pole was similarly violent, but A Brief History of Seven Killings had none of that poetic prose to ease the relentlessly miserable experience almost all of the characters were having.

What Marlon James did well was ratchet up the tension, especially just prior to the assassination attempt, but also before other explosive events. Even with no knowledge of what was coming, it was obvious that something was about to go down, which was emotionally engaging.

A reader who picked up A Brief History of Seven Killings because the blurb or real-life history sounded intriguing would probably enjoy it, this book just wasn’t for me, and I blame that more on whatever I read that interested me in it more than I blame it on the book itself.

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sunny_not's review

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Although the premise was interesting and I wanted to learn and read more, it was super complex there were too many characters and the story just kept on dragging and dragging. Since I picked this book up from a library I had to decide if I really wanted to continue on or get books that I'm a lot more excited about and I decided to get a new book. I might continue this someday but right now I'm not in the right headspace to read so much triggering stuff and it's such a long and challenging book. Overall probably wouldn't recommend it.

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