C'est chiant comme la mort: a review of Marlon James' "A Brief History of Seven Killings"

[dotinthesky]

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I really wanted to love this book, and at first I really admired its style, its blend of English and Patois, its violence and energy. A novel not only by a queer writer, but a Jamaican one at that, about an attempted murder on Bob Marley in the 70s and its aftermath. It seemed like the kind of book I wouldn’t be able to put down. I was willing to give Marlon James a lot of credit and let him seduce me, take me on this journey.

But then something unforgivable for a novel happened: none of the characters got traction. And more: I got bored.

To me, the novel is nothing without character. Although this novel is filled with them, moving from one voice to another, none work, none seduce, none infuriate. Their language, which at first bears down on you with innovation and speed soon grows repetitive, flat, tiresome, and pointless. The ventriloquism that some reviewers claimed was the novel’s strength seemed weak to me, not fully realised.

The novel is divided in chapters narrated by different characters, spanning the 70s and 80s. I found myself checking how many more pages until a chapter came to an end, hoping the next character would engage me. The comparison with Tarantino on the book jacket is apt – there’s a love with violent language just for the sake of it, as a form of jolting the reader and keeping them interested. But swear words, rape and torture don’t make a story, don’t draw us into an inner life. Maybe the point is that these characters are already half dead and don’t have much to offer apart from their internal, malfunctioning verborrhea.

I gave up on the novel halfway, around page 386. Perhaps something clicks later on and it turns into an amazing piece of work deserving of all the reviews and awards it has received.

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