Reviewed by Sidik Fofana
Marlon James’s latest novel takes us on a border-crossing, genre-bending crash through the shantytowns of Jamaica and beyond, using as a springboard the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976. Enlisted to tell the tale is a ragtag cluster of groupies, journalists, dead politicians, profiteers, and “rude boys” turned CIA pawns who speak of political corruption of two parties vying for the support of an international star and subsequently the heart of a nation.
These characters are privy to inside information. Some know why Marley, who is simply referred to as “the Singer,” was shot. Others know who did it. Although, Marley’s controversial Smile Jamaica concert is generally cited as the shooting’s official impetus, the murder attempt’s lasting reverberations tell a more fascinating story. “Like there’s a version of this story that’s not really about him, but about the people around him,” spouts the fictitious Rolling Stone journalist Alex Pierce. “The ones who come and go might actually provide a bigger picture than me asking him why he smokes ganja.”
More than merely a social artifact, A Brief History of Seven Killings is a clinic in voice-driven narrative. James proves to be a masterful juggler of dramatis personae, a ventriloquist unhindered by race, gender, age, or sexual predilection. He deserves special distinction for giving dimension to characters who, before this, seem to have only existed in parody. Papa-Lo, the “batty-boy” hating don of the underworld, is offset by Weeper, the out-of-the-closet strong-arm man. No two patois speakers are alike. People who are supposed to be neutral get their hands dirty. Characters come face to face with being in too deep, a realization that often occurs too late (for some fate only catches with them up across the sea in the Bronx).
Above all, a sort of self-effacing, fatalistic marionettist force governs this section of Kingston, (which James rechristens as the gothic “Copenhagen City”). Marley’s would-be assassins never face any formal reckoning for their crimes, but themselves become the victims of a more frenetic justice blindly meted out by a codeless underworld. The seven principle characters involved in the reggae legend’s murder plot all face their end violently; they are tied, mugged, ambushed, shot up, or expire obscurely in a prison cell. In this way, the novel is a car bomb mixture of Julius Caesar and Final Destination, where death reconciles all and the only logic is illogic. A Jamaican rudie searching for the meaning of life might do well to observe that planning one man’s murder prompts the universe to plan your own, but the reality is far more bleak and bludgeoning. As one character puts it, “…killing don’t need no reason. This is ghetto. Reason is for rich people. We have madness.”
James does not shy away from the scurrility of his narrators. They’re rough,lewd, and unapologetically homophobic. At times, one gets the notion that they love hearing the sound of their own voices. impressionism is eschewed for authenticity; every linguistic riff exhausted for better or for worse. The secularity doubles up as a neck-wringing defense for the novel itself. Some novels are written by armchair poets, it seems to say, but this one will be written by the thrum of the common tongue. If that means “batty boy” and “pussy hole” and “bamba clot” must be uttered fifty times they will–while daring one to question their literary place. Nevertheless, the “low and lovely” points of view imbue the novel with impending spirit of reggae and revolution. The novel’s interweaving plots, like the Copenhagen City getaway cars they depict, sweep up a reader fast once they reach full steam.
Seven Killings is a demanding read, clocking in at just over 700 pages, but flows like an intelligently mapped-out reality show confessional. They will be some who say it is the millennium’s As I Lay Dying, The Wire of Kingston West, the next Great Caribbean novel. Of course, much smoke would have to clear in the coming months before such definitive statements can be taken seriously, but as far as this summer, everyone’s eyes should be on Trenchtown.