Hardcover
Published July 9, 2020 by Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
A funny, sad and richly textured portrait of a struggling community in the crumbling and racist New York of 1969.
Bit of a roller coaster: starts off pretty awful, with characters who are tedious unselfaware automatons. Then a quarter of the way in it gets promising, with hints of inner life, complexity, nuance — not really believable, but I felt willing to go with it — and then it just seesaws back and forth, with moments of lucidity and reflection amid a baseline of vapidity.
There’s romance: two independent (and laughably improbable) love-at-first-sight tropes. Slapstick: the multiple last-minute escapes from the hired goon are played for humor, right? Intrigue, and Preaching, and Flawed But Basically Decent People, and a Nice Pat Wrapping-Up at the end.
It was almost three stars, but the frequent pattern of characters Mutually Understanding Each Other wore me out. That’s adolescent wishful-thinking connection, not messy real-world connection.
It took me a few attempts to get into this because McBride introduces a long list of characters right out of the gate and I struggled to keep them straight. For that reason, this might be better as a book than an audiobook, though I really appreciated the performance by Dominic Hoffman – once I had a clear sense of the characters, he did a great job bringing them to life.
This book also introduces a lot of questions, some of which it answers:
- Why did Deacon shoot Deems?
- Who brought the Jesus Cheese?
- How does someone retire from the mob?
- What was Brooklyn like in the late 60s?
- Where did the church Christmas money disappear to?
- What does it mean to be a good person?
Overall, I enjoyed Deacon King Kong because it was playful, because McBride created fun and flawed characters, and …
It took me a few attempts to get into this because McBride introduces a long list of characters right out of the gate and I struggled to keep them straight. For that reason, this might be better as a book than an audiobook, though I really appreciated the performance by Dominic Hoffman – once I had a clear sense of the characters, he did a great job bringing them to life.
This book also introduces a lot of questions, some of which it answers:
- Why did Deacon shoot Deems?
- Who brought the Jesus Cheese?
- How does someone retire from the mob?
- What was Brooklyn like in the late 60s?
- Where did the church Christmas money disappear to?
- What does it mean to be a good person?
Overall, I enjoyed Deacon King Kong because it was playful, because McBride created fun and flawed characters, and because he managed to connect most (if not all) of the dots in a way that was satisfying.
[a:James McBride|11728|James McBride|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1400174756p2/11728.jpg]'s [b:Deacon King Kong|51045613|Deacon King Kong|James McBride|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1570443527l/51045613.SX50.jpg|76287204] is one of those books that's so engrossing and good that I completely forgot that I subscribe to both Netflix and Amazon Prime. Fascinating characters and a story that moves along well, all while giving a terrific history of race relations in America in the late sixties even though the action takes place almost exclusively in a Brooklyn housing project. It's funny in some parts, moving in others, and the commentary doesn't feel like it's just been slipped in but is essential to the story. I found one anachronism—the Heimlich maneuver didn't exist until five years after it's part of the story here—and others who are smarter than I am may find more, but it's not important.
Deacon King Kong is one of those books you'll remember for a long time and be glad you read.
You worked, slaved, …
[a:James McBride|11728|James McBride|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1400174756p2/11728.jpg]'s [b:Deacon King Kong|51045613|Deacon King Kong|James McBride|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1570443527l/51045613.SX50.jpg|76287204] is one of those books that's so engrossing and good that I completely forgot that I subscribe to both Netflix and Amazon Prime. Fascinating characters and a story that moves along well, all while giving a terrific history of race relations in America in the late sixties even though the action takes place almost exclusively in a Brooklyn housing project. It's funny in some parts, moving in others, and the commentary doesn't feel like it's just been slipped in but is essential to the story. I found one anachronism—the Heimlich maneuver didn't exist until five years after it's part of the story here—and others who are smarter than I am may find more, but it's not important.
Deacon King Kong is one of those books you'll remember for a long time and be glad you read.
You worked, slaved, fought off the rats, the mice, the roaches, the ants, the Housing Authority, the cops, the muggers, and now the drug dealers. You lived a life of disappointment and suffering, of too-hot summers and too-cold winters, surviving in apartments with crummy stoves that didn't work and windows that didn't open and toilets that didn't flush and lead paint that flecked off the walls and poisoned your children, living in awful, dreary apartments built to house Italians who came to America to work the docs, which had emptied of boats, ships, tankers, dreams, money, and opportunity the moment the colored and the Latinos arrived. And still New York blamed you for all its problems.
