I just finished reading Deacon King Kong by James McBride. McBride is a wonderful writer and I really enjoyed this book as well as his previous books, The Good Lord Bird and The Color of Water.
Deacon King Kong is the story of Sportcoat and others in and around The Cause House housing project in south Brooklyn, Hot Sausage, Bam Bam, The Elephant and many others.
One day in 1969, Sportcoat, inebriated as usual on the local hooch called ‘King Kong’, strolls up to Deems, formerly the star pitcher on the neighborhood baseball team and now the number one drug dealer in the Cause project and shoots Deems ear off. Naturally, his friends all think Sportcoat is now walking dead because the drug dealer’s team is going to come after him, but things turn out differently.
Sportcoat is the only one who can hear his dead wife Hettie who walked into the bay leaving Sportcoat figure out where she hid the church Christmas fund between his many odd jobs and drinking. Many try to save him from what they expect will be certain death at the hands of Deem’s henchmen but he ignores all of them and keeps on trying to revive the baseball team and preparing for his first sermon as a deacon at the church.
The book is a crime novel, a mystery novel, a humor novel and many other things. McBride has a wonderful connection to his characters and is both beautifully written and profoundly humane. It’s clear he’s having fun writing the novel but he never loses sight of the suffering of the African American and Latino inhabitants of the projects. The ending is straight out of a Shakespearean comedy and I very much enjoyed it. You should read it; you will enjoy it too!
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