Cover Image: Deacon King Kong (Oprah's Book Club)

Deacon King Kong (Oprah's Book Club)

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Member Reviews

I reviewed this book on my BookTube Channel. It will go live on 4/29. Here is the link: https://youtu.be/y9icnxsZx-I

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A truly amazing book - although it took me a while to finish I loved the journey that this book took me on. Definitely will recommend to my colleagues and stock in my library.

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This story is a masterpiece. Deacon causes us to explore injustice and anger and what it means to help others.

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A very good book! Depicts very well the concern and caring of the people living in a Chicago neighborhood. Highly recommended

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This is the story is centered on the activities of main character, Sportcoat, a deacon at the local church of a community in Brooklyn. His wife passed away. During one of his alcoholic binges, he shoots the local drug dealer. The rest of the narrative tells of the ripple effect through the community. The impact is wide-reaching: the drug network, organized crime, local police, church members, residents, and long-time friends.

The beginning of the book is a bit chaotic as it is setting up the many threads. It is sometimes difficult to keep track of the many characters and plot points. The author did a fantastic job connecting everything together by the end.

McBride did a great job of incorporating humor to offset the serious topics. There are ongoing jokes about the definition of a deacon, a mysterious supply of cheese, and ants. The story has created a community of characters of many races that feel authentic and you genuinely care about what happens to them.

4 Stars

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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Wow. Wow. Wow.

I regret waiting so long to pick up this book, because once I did, I couldn't put it down. It's a staggering, exhilarating portrait of life in a primarily Black neighborhood in New York City in the 1960s. The title character is technically the main character in this novel, but it follows the story of so many characters, their lives interwoven in ways both explicitly outlined and implicitly understood. It's a mystery, yes, but more than that, it's about community and what it means to love each other even when you don't particularly like each other.

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I didn't finish this book but I have a couple of patrons who have loved it. I need to be grabbed from the very beginning of a book and this one just didn't do it for me.

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Heartbreaking, beautiful, complex. This novel captures all of the interconnectedness of community life, for better and for worse. The characters are compelling and lifelike.

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This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

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The lrose is gorgeous! Setting is Brooklyn and main characters are a preacher and drug runner. Evocative, emotionally stirring with comedy interspersed.

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Go back to September 1969
Meet Deacon who was best handyman, greatest green thumb, a Foolish Wonder who made everything alright.

You will meet the people around him which helps us get to know him and his circumstances.

Story deepens ...

(I got a little lost in following the storyline as
the characters aplenty confused me some )

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Deacon King Kong is a lovely written book that highlights the human spirit. McBride's characters are fully developed as both angels and devils. It is a comedic book set in 1960s Brooklyn that accurately portrays the time period, the language and the overall feel of the 1960s in New York. As a former New Yorker, it was a beautiful linguistic return to the city I love. McBride's ability to form sentences and his use of language is just extraordinary, all his books are a primer in how to describe, dissect, and transform characters using the simplest of words. All students of creative writing should look to McBride as a model of what good writing looks like. I recommend this book and all of his other books. They're an extreme treat.

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From the moment, Sportcoat enters the story by shooting the notorious local drug addict, the book takes off. It is an introspective look at a slice of life in 1960's Brooklyn and McBride does it so brilliantly..
I've been a fan of his ever since I read "The Color of Water," his important memoir.
His latest is written in such a distinctive manner. His prose reads poetically. He gets his messages across and there are many, in such a profound manner. Yet, for serious subjects, he instills such humor. This is such an important read.

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This novel brings you in with a gunshot and keeps you there, in the world of a housing project in 1969 Brooklyn, with vivid storytelling and truly unforgettable characters. We meet Sportcoat as he inexplicably shoots his one time protege and current neighborhood heroin dealer, Deems in the middle of the shared plaza in the Cause housing project. We then follow Sportcoat, alcoholic, widower, handyman, immigrant, and deacon at the Five Ends church as his alcohol addled mind recalls his life in the Cause district, his long departed wife Hettie, and unwittingly sets off a turf war between the established Italian crime syndicate and the burgeoning drug trade within the projects in a NYC on the brink of total change. Each chapter is told from the different perspectives of residents in the Cause district, all with their own version of events, and their own pasts to contend with and desired futures.

It's difficult to pinpoint what is the best aspect of this book because from the riveting plot, the vividly presented setting, the indelible characters, the extremely relevant social issues discussed, the compelling mystery at the heart of the book, the heartbreaking nostalgia of times past, the often harrowing stories of life in a housing project...there is a mastery in this novel that ties all of those things together to tell this story. It is one of those rare novels that makes you want to begin all over again after finishing. It is one of the best books I've read so far this year. It is one of the best books I've read...ever.

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Lord save us all from the book hype machine.

Deacon King Kong was charming and clever, and McBride’s chops are a writer are valid, but this book was way, way overhyped.

I had lofty expectations for this after reading loads of glowing reviews and endorsements, but for me it was...just ok.

The humor is notable and the plot is structurally interesting (or at least had the potential to be) but on the whole it’s a slow read (and not in a good way), too dialogue driven, and largely fails to engage.

I kept waiting for all of the chattiness of the prose to culminate in something meaningful, but the book just never got there.

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I'm going to cheat on this one and recommend that people interested in this book read Junot Diaz's review in the 29 February NY Times. I thought it was exactly right on all points (and much better written than anything I might have written). Feel free to skip what I'm about to say. Your time will be much better spent reading "Deacon King Kong."

"Deacon" has the texture of folklore and fable mixed with the unexpected rhythms of jazz and the noisy streets of late 1960s Brooklyn, a community late in the transition from merely poor to drug-ridden and ravaged. The language soars, and the characters... damn, they're wonderful! Hot Sausage, Sister Gee, Soup, Bunch Moon, Miss Izi, Bum-Bum, Joaquin whose "whose good looks were squeezed into a head that resembled a ski jump in that the back of his head was flat as a pancake, and the top of his head sloped downward like a ski slope, thus his childhood nickname, 'Salto,' or 'jump' in Spanish." -- not to mention the Irish cop, the Italian gangster and his mom the gardener, the Governor. And Jesus's Cheese. And the yearly parade of ants. (You'll figure it out. Just writing this makes me want to read the book again.)

There are mysteries and twists, turns, murder plots, missing treasure, broad comic strokes and set-pieces, promises broken... or not so much broken as abandoned because life had different plans for the promise-maker.

Deacon King Kong himself was born Cuffy Jasper Lambkin (aka Sportscoat), deacon in his church and frequent imbiber in a home-distilled liquor called King Kong. From the very beginning, his was a life touched by, um, challenge: The fact is, unbeknownst to the residents of the Cause, the death of Cuffy Jasper Lambkin -- which was Sportcoat's real name -- had been predicted long before he arrived at the Cause Houses. When he was slapped to life back in Possum Point, South Carolina, seventy-one years before, the midwife who delivered him watched in horror as a bird flew through an open window and fluttered over the baby's head, then flew out again, a bad sign. She announced, "He's gonna be an idiot," handed him to his mother, and vanished, moving to Washington, DC, where she married a plumber and never delivered another baby again.

Young Cuffy's childhood went downhill from there. I'll leave it here so readers can have the pleasure of hearing the boy's splendid sorrows themselves -- save to give a special nod (or shake of the head) to his stepmother, <i>who often recommended he go play at Sassafras Mountain, two hundred fifty-eight miles distant, and jump off the top naked.</i>

I loved the simple humanity of the characters. The long, energetic, love-filled conversations Sportscoat has with his dead wife, Hettie: <i>I ain't talking to Hettie's ghost. It's a nag that's bothering me, Sausage. What I'm talking to is a nag. A nag ain't no ghost. It's a mojo.</i> The longing Officer Potts unexpectedly finds himself feeling for Sister Gee, who longs herself to fill the emptiness in her life. And that the gangster known as The Elephant (who refuses to get into the drug running that's destroying communities and lives) feels for the "country girl" he hasn't met yet. The hope the characters find in their religion, and the release they find in their drink.

A motif that runs through the lives of all the main characters -- the wish held deeply in their souls that they could live a different life from the one they had. So much tenderness and love.

And a clear-eyed vision of the harsh realities of poverty and race in New York. Just a taste: <i>Life in the Cause would lurch forward as it always did. You worked, slaved, fought off the rats, the mice, the roaches, the ants, the Housing Authority, the cops, the muggers, and now the drug dealers. You live a life of disappointment and suffering, of too-hot summers and too-cold winters, surviving in apartments with crummy stoves that didn't work and windows that didn't open and toilets that didn't flush and lead paint that flecked off the walls and poisoned your children, living in awful, dreary apartments built to house Italians who came to America to work the docks, which had emptied of boats, ships, tankers, dreams, money, and opportunity the moment the colored and the Latinos arrived. And still New York blamed you for all its problems. And who can you blame? You were the one who chose to live here, in this hard town with its hard people, the financial capital of the world, land of opportunity for the white man and a tundra of spent dreams and empty promises for anyone else stupid enough to believe the hype.</i>

And lest I leave my reader with the wrong impression, "Deacon King Kong" is anything but dark. The darkness is there, along with the violence and pain and deprivation that everyone knows is coming with the drug trade. But "Deacon"'s spirit is filled with light and love, humor (lots of humor!) and affirmation. Every once in a while there's a glimmer of hope. Just a blip on the horizon, a whack on the nose of the giant that set him back on his heels or to the canvas, something that said, "Guess what, you so-and-so, I am God's child. And I. Am. Still. Here."

Read it. Days after you're done, the book will still be with you.

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Deacon King Kong is the story of a shooting in a housing project in New York in 1969. Sportcoat, or Deacon King Kong, walks up to the local drug dealer one morning and shoots him, we don't know why and he does not remember doing it. From there the story starts to interweave Sportcoat's friends, his dead wife, the drug dealers boss, a hitman, a local shipyard owner, and an Irish bagel shop owner (just to name a few) along with a missing box, no make that two missing boxes, baseball, and some Colombian ants. This is a story about how sometimes doing something good for a stranger can reap great benefits for others.

I really enjoyed this book although I spend way too much time trying to following timelines and ages in my head. It never seemed to add up correctly but I got over it. The story pulled me in and I just wanted to know what would happen next.

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I loved this book! "Deacon King Kong" opens with an older man failing to shoot a younger man in a crowded city square. This shocking event kicks off the story, but the book is really more about all of the characters living in a Brooklyn neighborhood in 1969. The title refers to Sportcoat, and he is one of the main characters, but the novel also features the criminals, police, church members, and family that all have long histories with each other. There is a lot of humor in the book, but some very poignant moments, too. Every character is multi-faceted and their actions are often unexpected. I loved meeting all of these characters.

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This is the first of James McBride's books I've read but it certainly won't be the last. What a skilled writer. I felt like I was right there watching the daily activities at the flagpole of the Cause Housing Project in 1969 when Deacon King Kong aka Sportcoat shot Deems, a 19-year old heroin dealer. Deems survives although his ear is nearly severed and Deacon, a confirmed elderly alcoholic, doesn't even remember shooting him.

While Deacon's friends try to protect him from retaliation by Deems and his drug posse, Deacon doesn't live in fear. Rather, he lives in the past convinced that he can once again coach Deems in baseball and steer him from a life of crime.

The nearby church where Sportcoat serves as deacon is home to a wide variety of friends and acquaintances who make Sportcoat's plight their own. With a wide cast of interesting characters from neighborhood Italians, police officers, and rival drug dealers it's easy for readers to feel they're part of the Cause experience. Highly recommended.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and I'm happy to have discovered a new favorite writer. His students at NYU are surely fortunate to have a master story teller guiding them.

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This book and everything that bright students will enjoy reading. Very distinctive voice, compelling characters, intricate, engaging plot, insight into urban culture that will be eyeopening to some and very relatable to others. It’s certainly wouldn’t pay for every student but it’s perfect for a portion of a student population looking for a really great contemporary urban voice.

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