What readers think of Deacon King Kong, plus links to write your own review.

This remarkable, heartwarming book by James McBride is truly an original. It's a masterpiece of a story that is unlike anything I have ever read. It's funny. It's tragic. And it's nearly perfect.

The book is a character-driven roller-coaster ride through a bleak, poverty-stricken part of Brooklyn just as heroin and the violent drug dealers who peddled it got a firm foothold. And, oh, what characters they are! From two old drunks named Deacon King Kong (also known as Sportcoat) and Hot Sausage, to the church ladies who rule and care for their insular world, to the teenagers who are just coming into their own and are being lured into a drug-fueled world of money and expensive sneakers, these characters together create a microcosm of society. And, you, the reader, are thrust into the middle of it.

Taking place in massive housing project in the fall of 1969, the book opens with an inexplicable—but not too destructive—act of violence when Sportcoat shoots 19-year-old Deems, a boy who can pitch a baseball at 90 mph but has decided selling heroin is a better way to live. Deems, whom Sportcoat has always treated as a son, is injured but not badly. Now…imagine that shooting scene as the hub of a wheel. The rest of the book is the spokes—the convoluted, fascinating, head-scratching stories, backstories, and actions of a slew of characters who are somehow related to this shooting. And every single one—from the white Irish cop to Sportcoat's dead wife to the Italian mobsters who are taking over the drug business—is vivid, real, and very colorful. Amazingly, even though there are what seem like a bajillion characters (give or take), it's easy to keep them all straight, which is a tribute to the terrific storytelling ability of James McBride. (And Kindle users can always use the X-ray feature if they need help with that.)

Parts of the book are hilarious. Parts of it are deadly serious. It's even part slapstick. But absolutely all of it is really, really good. This is a richly imagined story that drew me in slowly until I got wound up tight in it. The writing is extraordinary, a powerful force field of its own.

While the society in which the story takes places is fractured and destructive, there is also a deeply spiritual goodness that permeates over the despair and evil, leaving in its wake hope and love and faith. It's everything you want in a novel. Read it!

Totally different than anything I’ve read in a long time. The story opens to fast moving dialogue and so many different characters that it’s sort of overwhelming. If you experience this, you just have to go with the flow, because somewhere along the way it all gels and clicks. I predict that this will be the most hopeful novel you will pick up in a long, long time, despite the fact that’s it’s about some of the most poverty stricken people living in the projects/public housing in South Brooklyn circa 1969. This book is both funny and moving and will refresh your faith in humanity. Highly recommended.