The ten best books of 2014
Reported in The Washington Post, 12/18/14
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS
By Marlon James (Riverhead)
Exploding with violence, the third novel by Marlon James cuts a swath across recent Jamaican history. It leaves its Kingston ghettos strewn with victims, a few of them lovers, all of them spattered with blood. Seven killings? That’s just for starters. This compelling, not-so-brief history brings off a social portrait worthy of Diego Rivera, antic and engagé, a fascinating tangle of the naked and the dead. The key event is an actual failed assassination in December 1976, when an armed gang overran the Kingston compound of reggae superstar Bob Marley. “Seven Killings” relates this extended episode, like all the rest, through a kaleidoscope of imaginary speakers. James proves especially adept at criminal power dynamics, expressed in poetic monologues laced with breathtaking obscenities. His story lines often end with a bullet, but they never shortchange shooter or victim. What most distinguishes “A Brief History of Seven Killings” isn’t the outrages but the odyssey. — John Domini
FOURTH OF JULY CREEK
By Smith Henderson (Ecco)
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