A review by hirvimaki
Deacon King Kong by James McBride

1.0

An almost DNF - but it is a book club pick so... I had to skim after about 40%. I just couldn't. It has a congeries of characters that rivals Six of Crows or Handmaiden's Tale but the depth of a 90's sitcom. If there was anything profound in those pages I didn't find it (I don't buy that everyone is good even when doing bad) and if there was humour it was mostly lost on me. It is long and repetitive with a cliche ending. Yes, it is a slice-of-life tale, but not a very good one. Please give me Steinbeck, Salinger, Lee, or, if you want to be more modern, Zusak, Coelho, or Haddon. I'm fully willing to admit that it went over my head because I was unable to connect with any character. But not because I didn't grow up in a Brooklyn housing project. I wasn't fleeing persecution and murder in WW2 nor a was I a tenant farmer in the Great Depression nor a shepherd boy searching for treasure at the Egyptian pyramids, yet I was able to connect with and truly care about those characters. Not so with any of the cartoonish, floppy characters in this book.