A Brief History of Seven Killings (2015)
Who wrote it?
Marlon James (1970- ; active 2002-), born Kingston, Jamaica. His parents were both members of the Jamaican police, and devoted readers who influenced his love of literature. He attended Kingston's Wolmer's Trust High School for Boys and graduated from the University of the West Indies with a degree in Language and Literature. He is openly gay and left Jamaica in part because of fear of continuing homophobia in the country.
His first novel, John Crow's Devil (2005) was rejected 70 times before being accepted for publication. His second, the acclaimed The Book of Night Women (2009) details a slave woman's revolt in a Jamaican plantation in the 19th Century. A Brief History... was his third novel and first to be be Booker shortlisted. His latest novel Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019) is the first in a planned fantasy series. Of late, he's also hosted a literary podcast with his author Jake Morrissey, and written an HBO/Channel 4 TV series (due 2022) called Get Millie Black.
He's mentioned influences ranging from Dickens to Ben Okri via the music of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh and comics like Hellboy, while at the same time being compared to everyone from Faulkner to Quentin Tarantino.
What's it about?
A Brief History of Seven Killings is about an attempt on the life of Bob Marley in 1976. Except, of course, it’s about far more than that. It’s also far from brief at almost 700 dense pages, and covers considerably more than seven killings, typically in graphic and visceral detail. It’s actually about several decades of complex and violent Jamaican history, told through a multiplicity of voices from gang leaders to politicians, journalists and seemingly peripheral “ordinary” people. Oh, and a ghost. Because of course.
To attempt to detail its contents in a few short paragraphs would be foolish, but safe to say it centres on the years when Jamaica became a focus of worldwide attention, with the CIA, the world’s media, and numerous other external influences descending on a culture already beset by division and corruption, further exacerbating the tensions and plunging the country into chaos. It also explores the legacy of those years in the late 70s and 80s, on Jamaica, several key players, and much wider into the US, with long sections set amongs the “War on Drugs” of the late 80s in New York and Miami.
What I liked
Disentangling likes and dislikes in this one is harder than perhaps ever before - because pretty much everything that is brilliant about this novel is also (at times) somewhat frustrating.
But let’s try… and begin with the fact that it’s unlike any other Booker winner to date. In the annals of a Prize that has alternately been celebrated and criticised for rewarding “readability”, James’ novel seems determined to resist easy answers and straightforward storytelling. You’re constantly thrust headlong into the thick of the action, through the first-person voices of characters who you may or may not be familiar with, who may or may not be operating under their real names, and who may or may not be alive. It doesn’t patronize its readers and it makes you work hard to understand. This isn’t always “easy”, but it is ultimately rewarding and absolutely something that sets it apart from most other winners.
It similarly resists the idea of telling any one story. It lures you in with a premise around the death of Marley / “the Singer”, but spins off in a thousand related (and often at least seemingly unrelated) directions.
It’s also brilliantly self-referential in this sense, particularly towards its climax where we get a glimpse of how weak and inadequate a telling of this history would be in the hands of the hilariously awful Rolling Stone journalist (Jesus-looking white saviour and user of the word “bogus”) Alex Pierce.
This is a book for language lovers. James said he set out to write something that was all about “voice” and in that sense it’s a roaring success. The range of voices is hypnotic, occasionally cacophonous, captivating, almost always confusing, but equally incredibly impressive.
Throughout there are real stories that resonate - from graphic explorations of violence and its impact on families / cultures, to personal tales of people on the run from their past / their own identity / their sexual preferences, to - in the midst of all this - inevitable reflections on the meaninglessness of it all.
I also learned many new swear words (as anticipated by a wise commenter over on Instagram) which is always a bonus.
What I didn’t like
Spinning some of the same points on their head: this was not easy work. It’s taken me by far the longest of all the Booker winners to complete, and I am somewhat exhausted by the process. I’m glad in many ways to be rid of the perpetual confusion over characters, of the need to refer to the extensive “cast list” at the novel’s start (often unhelpful in any case) and of the density of the thing - the constant realisation that I’d been plugging away for an hour and managed about 20 pages of only semi-comprehended reading.
Can I honestly recommend this one if you haven’t already read it? I’m not sure. It’s become a bit of a recurring theme of my reviews to say that I would have given up on this were it not for the Booker challenge, and it’s never been more true than here. I’m not sure I can ever say I genuinely “got into” this one, despite enjoying its language and rhythm throughout. And yet…
Despite all of this, though, it did come together. There’s a tension & release element to this book. Both in the small moments of humour, humanity, and insight that pop up throughout, and in the remarkably straightforward (by contrast) final 100 or so pages where everything kind of reaches a form of resolution. It’s a conclusion which makes everything else more enjoyable in retrospect and almost (I caveat almost) makes you want to dive back into its mad, mad world all over again.
Food & drink pairings
Jerk chicken, rice and peas, plantain etc
Oh, and crack. Lots of crack.
Fun facts
Chair of the panel Michael Wood said that James was a unanimous choice, arrived at in under 2 hours - far from a common outcome of Booker deliberations!
James was the first Jamaican winner of the Prize (and indeed the first to be shortlisted), once again dismissing suggestions that the 2014 rule changes would lead to US domination of the Prize.
The five sections of the book are given musical titles, as follows: Original Rockers (an Augustus Pablo album); Ambush in the Night (a track from Bob Marley's final studio album); Shadow Dancin' (by Bee Gees' brother Andrew Gibb & heavily referenced in that section of the book); White Lines / Kids in America (Melle Mel / Kim Wilde hits); and Sound Boy Killing (by dancehall act Mega Banton)
HBO optioned the novel back in 2015 with plans for a TV series. Reports in 2017 suggested that the project would be helmed by Meliana Matsoukas, director of HBO's Insecure and music videos including Beyonce's "Formation", broadcast by Amazon, and written by James himself.
Vanquished Foes
Tom McCarthy (Satin Island)
Chigozie Obioma (The Fishermen)
Sunjeev Sahota (The Year of the Runaways)
Anne Tyler (A Spool of Blue Thread)
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
Any tips from this list, of which (unusually for more recent years) I’ve read none?
The 2015 Women's (Baileys) Prize went to Ali Smith’s How to Be Both, a Booker nominee from 2014, which beat a typically strong list including the likes of Rachel Cusk and Sarah Waters. It was also the year of the first “best winner EVER” type occasions for the Women’s Prize, which on the occasion of the Prize’s 20th anniversary went to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half a Yellow Sun.
Context
In 2015:
Boko Haram massacres in Baga, Nigeria kill more than 2000
Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris
ISIS demolition of ancient historic sites in Iraq including Nimrud and Hatra
Al-Shabaab mass shooting at university in Kenya kills 148
Conservatives under David Cameron form their first majority UK government in 18 years
Republic of Ireland votes in a referendum to legalise same sex marriage
Queen Elizabeth II becomes longest-reigning British monarch, surpassing Victoria
Volkswagen emissions test rigging scandal
NASA announces that liquid water has been found on Mars
Justin Trudeau becomes Canadian PM
Paris terrorist attacks at multiple sites including Stade de France and Bataclan music venue kill 130
Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman (publication of novel written c. 1955)
Jonathan Franzen, Purity
The Revenant
The Big Short
Spectre (James Bond movie)
Inside Out
Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly
Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell
Carly Rae Jepsen, E*MO*TION
Adele, 25
Life Lessons
There is no one story
Violence is everywhere
This isn’t about what you think this is about
Score
9
Hard work rewarded and a genuine Booker original.
Ranking to date:
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (1989) - 9.5
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (1981) - 9.5
Disgrace - J. M. Coetzee (1999) - 9.5
The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan (2014) - 9.5
The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst (2004) - 9
Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively (1987) - 9
A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James (2015) - 9
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga (2008) - 9
Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth (1992) - 9
Oscar & Lucinda - Peter Carey (1988) - 9
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch (1978) - 9
Life & Times of Michael K. - J. M. Coetzee (1983) - 9
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy (1997) - 9
Schindler’s Ark - Thomas Keneally (1982) - 9
The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai (2006) - 9
Life of Pi - Yann Martel (2002) - 8.5
Bring Up The Bodies - Hilary Mantel (2012) - 8.5
The Bone People - Keri Hulme (1985) - 8.5
How Late it Was, How Late - James Kelman (1994) - 8.5
Troubles - J.G. Farrell (1970, "Lost Booker") - 8.5
The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes (2011) - 8
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood (2000) - 8
Possession - A. S. Byatt (1990) - 8
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel (2009) - 8
Saville - David Storey (1976) - 8
The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton (2013) - 8
The Sea - John Banville (2005) - 8
The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell (1973) - 8
Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre (2003) - 7.5
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje (1992) - 7.5
The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobson (2010) - 7.5
Rites of Passage - William Golding (1980) - 7.5
The Gathering - Anne Enright (2007) - 7.5
True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey (2001) - 7.5
Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald (1979) - 7.5
Last Orders - Graham Swift (1996) - 7
The Elected Member - Bernice Rubens (1970) - 7
The Conservationist - Nadine Gordimer (1974) - 7
Holiday - Stanley Middleton (1974) - 7
Heat & Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) - 6.5
In a Free State* - V.S. Naipaul (1971) - 6.5
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle (1993) - 6
G. - John Berger (1972) - 6
The Famished Road - Ben Okri (1991) - 6
Something to Answer For - P. H. Newby (1969) - 5.5
The Ghost Road** - Pat Barker (1995) - 5.5
Staying On - Paul Scott (1977) - 5
Amsterdam - Ian McEwan (1998) - 5
Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner (1984) - 4.5
The Old Devils - Kingsley Amis (1986) - 4
*Read in later condensed edition.
**Third part of a trilogy of which I hadn’t read pts 1&2
Next up
“The Americans” finally arrive (several years later than anticipated) in the shape of Paul Beatty and his 2016 winner The Sellout.
