The Novel and Its Discontents

Rather than a straightforward review of this year’s winner of the Man Booker Prize, the editor of Open suggested I write a somewhat more sprawling piece, with the novel at its centre, so I’ve taken him at his word. Should you only want to know what I thought of the novel, please skip the next two paragraphs; otherwise let me give you a quick take on what I think of the contemporary literary novel.

After nearly four decades of being a book addict, and one whose preferred stimulant is literary fiction, I’ve come up with a few fairly inflexible rules on what makes for a good possibly great novel. These are as follows:

– A good novel is one you actually finish.

– A good novel will be told stylishly, its prose should let you slip in, and then close over you, never letting you go.

– A great novel will be original, and will make you walk down paths you haven’t walked before, no matter how experienced and demanding a reader you are.

– A great novel will make you work to unlock its secrets.

– A great novel will leave you shaken and exhilarated (even if its subject matter is depressing) after you’ve finished reading it. It will lift you out of yourself.

– A great novel does not need a literary prize or ecstatic reviews to gild its glory. You must remember that most reviewers over there (by which I mean the Macaulayputras of the West) or here have not actually read the novel, or if they have read it, usually have no means of providing the right context for the text, unless such context is the Western canon in the case of Western reviewers (who are, unsurprisingly, profoundly ignorant of the literatures or trends of the East) or pretentious twaddle gleaned from here and there (a New Yorker piece, some obscure Eastern European blog, anything, so long as it isn’t home-grown) in the case of most reviewers in this country.

– A great novel must last for a minimum of 20 years—that is, a generation. It should continue to be read long after the glow of prizes and reviews have faded.

– And, finally, a great novel is one that transcends place, time and the lineage and credentials of its creator. It is, quite literally, a gift that keeps on giving. You should be able to read it over and over again, sometimes obsessively so, as I do with, for example, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.

As is probably evident from the foregoing rules, I do not set much store by what others think of a book, whether these are members of juries of literary prizes or reviewers of books. In this I am not alone. As someone who has spent much of his adult life trying to talk up the virtues of books—my own, as well as those I publish—I have come to realise that, pretentious literary fellow travellers aside, people tend to make up their own mind (especially in this country) about literary fiction. (I have seldom seen sales of a book go up if it receives an excellent review, and the only prize that seems to matter—in terms of getting people to take a chance on an author or a book—is the Booker Prize.) This is as it should be, when you take into account the fact that every ‘expert’ (whether reviewer or juror of a prize) is only putting forward a subjective view of the book in question. Now, if the person doing the judging was someone you trusted, you might be influenced enough to read and even like the book he or she was recommending. Otherwise all that prizes or glowing notices are good for is to alert you to the book’s existence. After that it’s up to you.

Keeping that perspective in mind, here’s what I think of A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James. In my opinion, it’s an exceptional novel. It’s original, it makes you work for the payoff, it’s told very stylishly, and the characters, setting, and truths it imparts are all quite memorable. Will it last 20 years? I have no idea, we’ll just have to wait and see. But, on a first reading, it’s a great, glowing fireball of a novel, fanned to white heat by an author with commendable talent. The Booker, which doesn’t always get it right (I don’t need to go there) has done a fine job this time, and brought Mr James and his wonderful book to the attention of what, I hope, will be millions of readers. And, of that number, if only a few manage to read it all the way through, then I think both the author and his readers will be happy.

In its essence, this is a novel of a place in time, and the characters that populate it. The place is Jamaica in the 1970s, and the characters are an assortment of gang members, whores, spies, politicians, ghosts and most of all Bob Marley, the legendary reggae singer, who is called The Singer in the book, and whose presence pervades every page. The plot, such as it is, revolves around a notorious incident that took place on 3 December 1976, a few days before one of the most violent elections in the Caribbean was to take place. Marley was scheduled to play a concert called the Smile Jamaica concert to ease the political tension that had the country in its grip. Two days before the big event seven gunmen attacked Marley’s home; the singer was wounded, as was his wife, manager and several others. While there were rumours that the attack was politically motivated, nothing about it was known with any certainty, especially as Marley himself died a few years later. The one thing that is known is that all the would-be assassins were picked off one by one, although mystery shrouds their deaths. The whole episode, and the turbulent time in which it took place, given the lack of concrete detail, was an irresistible subject for any writer of fiction. And, in the hands of someone as talented as Marlon James, the whole thing flares into light and shadow.

There is a wonderfully phrased Jamaican saying which the author also uses as an epigraph to the book—If it no go so, it go near so. It is used to describe, more or less, any reasonably accurate account or imaginative recreation of an actual event. That is the perfect way to describe the novel.

But that statement does not actually tell you much about what makes the novel tremendous. Its power comes from James’s facility with language, and his ability to inject his characters with the blood and noisy particularity that makes them come alive on the page and in the minds of readers. There are Jamaican gang members (enforcers, dons, hangers on) like Josey Wales and Papa-Lo, CIA spooks like Barry Diflorio, a Rolling Stone journalist called Alex Pierce, assorted pimps, whores, drug addicts and politicians, and looming over them all, The Singer, ‘reggae superstar of the world’. The novel is not so much told by the author as filtered through the minds and eyes and voices of his characters, which is to say, the novel comprises multiple points of view (which constitute chapters), pretty much all of them told in the first person. Let’s hear briefly from perhaps the most interesting character in the book, a stone cold killer called Josey Wales, who is also a bit of a philosopher—when he is not burying people alive, raping women or cutting in half (with guns and knives) anyone who challenges his authority.

‘In the ghetto there is no such thing as peace. There is only this fact. You power to kill me can only be stop by my power to kill you. You have people living in the ghetto who can only see within it. From me was a young boy all I could see was outside it. I wake up looking out, I go to school and spend the whole day looking out the window, I go up to Maresceaux Road and stand right at the fence that separate Wolmer’s Boys’ School from Mico College, just a zinc fence that most people don’t know separate Kingston from St. Andre, uptown from downtown, those who have it and those who don’t. People with no plan wait and see. People with a plan see and wait for the right time. The world is not a ghetto and a ghetto is not the world. People in the ghetto suffer because there be people who live for making them suffer. Good time is bad time for somebody too.’

A Brief History of Seven Killings is a book that may or may not be to your taste. It most reminded me of a novel called Sour Sweet by Timothy Mo, a brilliant account of Chinese triads in London, although that book was conventionally told. It was shortlisted for the Booker, at a time when the prize was in its infancy. This is, I think, the better book. It is not an easy novel to read or like, which is probably why every ‘mainstream’ publisher it was offered to in the UK, decided to pass until a small independent called Oneworld Publications took it on. I loved it, though, and I am glad I read it. It’s a book I am looking forward to re-reading a couple of years from now.

A Brief History of Seven KillingsbooksGabriel Garcia MarquezMarlon JamesOne Hundred Years of Solitude