![]() ![]() He doesn’t just pivot from the humor to the agony he seems to deploy both modes at once, and it speaks to his talents that he does so with dexterous aplomb. For all the laughs, he never loses sight of the terrible longitudinal harm that African diasporic and Latine peoples have suffered in the New World. Set in 1969, Deacon King Kong relates the saga of Cuffy Lambkin, a migrant from Possum Point, South Carolina, to South Brooklyn. I made the mistake of reading “Deacon King Kong” on the Tokyo subway and my nonstop chortling made me no friends.īut just because McBride is playing doesn’t mean he’s fooling around. McBride’s got jokes like Ali Wong’s got jokes. ![]() It’s clear that he’s having a blast, and his spirit of funning irreverence supercharges the entire narrative like home-brewed black lightning. He has written beautifully before, in his beloved memoir, “The Color of Water,” and, with terrifying irreverence, in his National Book Award-winning novel, “The Good Lord Bird.” But “Deacon King Kong” reads like he’s tapped a whole fresh seam of inspiration and verve. ![]() Fortunately, it is also deeply felt, beautifully written and profoundly humane McBride’s ability to inhabit his characters’ foibled, all-too-human interiority helps transform a fine book into a great one. ![]() “Deacon King Kong” is many things: a mystery novel, a crime novel, an urban farce, a portrait of a project community. *** Best Novel of 2020! Deacon King Kong: A Novelīuy Now: ![]()
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