Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This was probably the most challenging novel I've read in several years. Who am I kidding? There's no probably about it. Marlon James has constructed an incredibly complex story, and it took every bit of memory available to me to keep up. He was kind enough to include a cast of characters, but I made it a point to refer to it as little as possible, opting instead to try and follow the story under my own power. Add to the story's complexity the fact that most of the characters are from the ghettos of Kingston, and speak in a patois that takes some serious acclimation initially, and will slow your reading speed to a crawl at times. Amazingly though, after spending nearly a week with these characters, I felt like I had picked up the meanings quite well and could read those sections much quicker. Strangely, for me, this adaptation was the most rewarding aspect of this particular reading experience. In fact, as much respect as I now have for Marlon James' talent, I have to admit that I did not actually enjoy this novel, and found it made for an almost constantly uncomfortable reading experience. The last time I felt the inability to enjoy such a well written book, I was reading In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a Pulitzer finalist. Both books require the reader to spend most of their time in very difficult places. By difficult I mean places where innocents suffer a great deal of agony and injustice, and both books left me feeling a certain hopelessness from which I felt the reader was never released. That may well be James' intention, and the fact that he could take me to such places and make them feel so real as to make me uncomfortable is a testament to his talents. This novel contains a great deal of incredibly graphic violence (including rape), and in fact I cannot name a more graphically violent novel that I've read in the past few years. Perhaps Philip Meyers' "The Son" comes close? There is also a lot of quite graphic sex, and since the majority of the novel's many characters are hardcore criminals, the language is very often coarse throughout the story. The number of such moments are what makes it difficult for me to recommend the book to anyone whose taste and tolerance for such things I do not know well. But the novel seems to me to have been an honest one, and as you wallow in the depths and the dregs with these gangsters, you sense the suffering from which they were born, and and begin to understand their Machiavellian existence. Again, James was able to take me to some places I've certainly never been, but I can't necessarily say I'm glad I went there. Overall, this is a brilliantly executed novel by a man who possesses a great deal of talent, and yet it is a book that is likely to prove a challenging read to most, for the reasons I've listed and more. I can't say that I'm happy to have read it, but I can certainly appreciate the art that James has created, and I do take some personal satisfaction in having followed such an intricate story to its end. Reading difficult fiction isn't always enjoyable, but it is usually beneficial, and for that I can say I'm grateful to have read A Brief History of Seven Killings.