After some chapters, you feel empathetically exhausted, in the way you might feel drained by watching an overtime football game. And the sentences! The prose radiates a kind of chain-reaction energy. Reading it is like watching a movie in which one’s occasional impulse to ask questions is pleasantly swamped by the need to keep up with the pace of events.

***** 'The ending was one of those where you clutch your heart and want to hug the book (or your Kindle).The sheer volume of invention in Deacon King Kong-on the level of both character (the first chapter alone introduces twenty individuals by name) and language-commands awe. ***** ''Deacon' has the texture of folk lore and fable mixed with the unexpected rhythms of jazz and the noisy streets of late 1960s Brooklyn.' ***** 'This book was a balm for my soul, a portrait of a black church community circa 1969 with sweet characters (well, most of them), interconnections that stretch back decades, and a plot with more than one mystery at its heart.' A good old fashioned yarn shot through with truth, spirit, and humor. I loved every minute spent with Sportcoat and his community. ***** 'I do believe I just finished one of my all time favorite books. I haven't been this pleasantly surprised by a book in a while.' ***** ' Deacon King Kong is one of those novels whose brilliance sneaks up on you. ' Deacon King Kong is deeply felt, beautifully written and profoundly humane McBride's ability to inhabit his characters' foibled, all-too-human interiority helps transform a fine book into a great one' The New York Times Book Review

From a prize-winning storyteller, this New York Times bestseller shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, and that the communities we build are fragile but vital. It is very funny in places, and heartbreaking in others. The repercussions of that moment draw in the whole community, from Sportcoat's best friend - Hot Sausage - to the local Italian mobsters, the police (corrupt and otherwise), and the stalwart ladies of the Five Ends Baptist Church.ĭEACON KING KONG is a book about a community under threat, about the ways people pull together in an age when the old rules are being rewritten. In a housing project in south Brooklyn, a shambling old church deacon called Sportcoat shoots - for no apparent reason - the local drug-dealer who used to be part of the church's baseball team.

This alone may qualify it as one of the year's best novels.' The Washington Postįrom the winner of a National Book Award and author of the bestselling memoir,The Color of Water, and The Good Lord Bird, soon to be a TV series starring Ethan Hawke 'A hilarious, pitch-perfect comedy set in the Brooklyn projects of the late 1960s. THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK

Book review of deacon king kong