Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction Winner of the Gotham Book Prize One of Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of the Year" Oprah's Book Club Pick Named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and TIME Magazine A Washington Post Notable Novel From the author of the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird and the bestselling modern classic The Color of Water, comes one of the most celebrated novels of the year. In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project’s drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride’s funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird. In Deacon King Kong, McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood’s Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself. As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters—caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York—overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion. Bringing to these pages both his masterly storytelling skills and his abiding faith in humanity, James McBride has written a novel every bit as involving as The Good Lord Bird and as emotionally honest as The Color of Water. Told with insight and wit, Deacon King Kong demonstrates that love and faith live in all of us.
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" A novel full of flawed characters from the streets of Brooklyn in 1969. There's the black, the Irish, the Puerto Ricans, the Italians along with church goers, drug dealers, the mobsters. Some are insane, some poor, some crooks, and some cops. It all makes NYC and the novel a wonderful thing. Some pages were entire sentences that just worked. The tale moves along at a nice, crisp pace all centering around Sportcoat, aka Deacon King Kong. We're not quite sure what will happen to him after he shoots the local drug supplier, but each page unfolds more of his story. Where he ends up is a delightful surprise. Can you have a coming-of age novel about a 71 year old man? He is funny and compassionate along with the colorful other characters. The women of the church are hilarious. This is a love story, a fortune hunt, a mystery, and a telling of a neighborhood. I loved it."
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Bibliobethica (5 out of 5 stars)