For example, there's a brilliant chapter about the way red killer ants made their way to New York City and became part of the Cause Houses projects: McBride has a talent for writing about big ensembles, and here even the city and its animals are important players. Sportcoat is at the center of everything, but folks from church and the projects, small time crooks, bodega owners, mobsters, and cops all get space on the page, and they all earn it. He also showcases the city's wonderful diversity, filling his pages with Puerto Ricans, African Americans, Italians, and Irish folks.Īnd all these many people get a turn in the spotlight. His story focuses on the people that make the Big Apple what it is: the strange, the poor, the insane, the mobsters. McBride's prose is shimmering and moving, a living thing that has its own rhythm, pulls you in from the first page and never lets go. Deems dodges at the last second and the bullet merely rips his ear off, but the consequences of Sportcoat's actions go above and beyond a damaged ear and a trip to the hospital.īooks James McBride Says Fiction Writing Allows Him More Freedomĭeacon King Kong is fast, deep, complex, and hilarious.

38 from his pocket, and shoots Deems, the project's chief drug dealer - right in front of everybody. One day, drunk and angry, Sportcoat saunters into the Cause Houses courtyard, takes a rusty. He argues with her ghost almost constantly and is obsessed with the money from the Christmas Club, which was in a secret place she didn't tell anyone about before dying. Sportcoat, also known as Deacon Cuffy, lost his wife a while ago, and his life has been on a downward spiral since. The year is 1969, and Sportcoat is the hard-drinking deacon of an old church in the Cause Houses projects in south Brooklyn. The novel is 370 pages, but McBride has packed enough in there for a dozen novellas, and reading them all mashed together is a pleasure.

The prose is relentless and McBride's storytelling skills shine as he drags readers at breakneck speed trough a plethora of lives, times, events, and conversations. James McBride's Deacon King Kong is a feverish love letter to New York City, people, and writing. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Deacon King Kong Author James McBride

Deacon King Kong by James McBride