A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

This book was a real challenge for me in many ways. First of all, the subject matter – given away quite obviously from the title – involved many killings (far more than seven, spoiler alert!) and extreme violence including rape. Secondly, the intermittent use of the Jamaican dialect style of writing to depict some of the characters’ internal dialogue, made it quite difficult to read – although even this wasn’t sufficient to obscure the extreme subject matter. Additionally, there were the added challenges of numerous characters (which I find less of a problem as I just tend to assume that if the character is significant they will become familiar through the course of the book) and the nature of the storytelling from multiple viewpoints, each character generally nursing various grudges and attempting to execute various hidden agendas.

As ever, with reading the Booker, one can’t fault the quality of the writing and the ambition of the writer. In fact, managing to successfully repulse a reader takes some skill as it involves vividly conveying occurrences. This book definitely managed to convey a sense of immediacy, however, this resulted in me withdrawing from caring about the characters (which perhaps draws a parallel with the hardening of many of the characters that occurs when exposed to constant violence from a young age) but also meant I withdrew from caring about the narrative. This book challenged my willpower regarding my policy of always finishing a book after starting, as I was tempted to stop reading as I disliked it so much. In fact, it was only because I’d persevered with other Bookers that I didn’t enjoy, that I couldn’t justify stopping this time. And so I set myself a daily page goal of 68 pages and plodded on day by day.

The book did introduce me to a time and place in history about which I knew very little as the story explores the attempted assassination of Bob Marley (referred to as ‘The Singer’) and its political context of Jamaica and the role played by the CIA in that area of the world. The story also covers the 1980s crack wars in New York City and also jumps to the 1990s for the last part. I think that although the same characters recur, the scope of novel was too great and encompassed too much to be particularly effective. However, I’m not sure whether I came to that conclusion mainly because I didn’t enjoy the subject matter with its graphic violence and swearing. I make a point of avoiding violence in films and TV as I find it disturbing. However, clearly I acknowledge that there are many people living in numerous places in the world, such as those depicted in this book, who do not have this privilege of choosing to avoid violence and are forced to choose between killing or being killed.

I also think that this book made me reflect on the use of written dialects and reminded me of ‘How Late It Was, How Late’ the 1994 winner which was written in the Glaswegian vernacular and equally challenging. It is no doubt a point of debate and contention as clearly these differences occur and are inherent in the culture of the place where a novel is set. However, it does make it very difficult to read, follow and understand what is happening when one isn’t familiar with the dialect and has no cues of body language etc that one might have if visiting the place in person and interacting with those local. There is clearly much that can be lost in translation from one language to another and therefore it is not always possible to convey the true sense or meaning of the character, but then this is also lost if a reader cannot understand what is being said/written. I’m not sure what the solution to this issue is, or whether there even needs to be a solution, but it is always interesting to reflect on such aspects in the course of writing these reviews and it would be great to hear other views and perspectives on this topic.