Review: 'Deacon King Kong'

Deacon King Kong

By James McBride

Literary Fiction

Riverhead Books

The best kind of novel set in the past that shines a light on the era in which it is set also illuminates aspects of today.

That's the kind of novel Deacon King Kong by James McBride is.

The stage is set with the elderly deacon of Five Hands Church in a 1969 New York City housing project walking up to the local young drug dealer and shooting an old gun at him. The deacon, known around the neighborhood as Sportcoat, is usually drunk, has survived numerous physical accidents and is mourning the death of his wife two years ago. He also was baseball coach to the young drug dealer, Deems, when he was a kid.

But if it looks like this is going to be a hardened, dire novel, McBride soon sets the reader right. Sportcoat misses, hitting Deems's ear, and the youngster chokes on the sandwich he has been eating. Sportcoat jumps on top of Deems, who is on all fours, and attempts the Heimlich maneuver. It does not look like an act of mercy to the gossiping neighborhood.

Many of the characters are looking for something. Sportcoat is always on the look-out for more of the homemade hootch, known as King Kong. He's also trying to find the Christmas fund box that his late wife hid somewhere, because the rest of the congregation would like their money. Deems is looking to expand his business. His supplier is looking to do the same. His supplier's hit man, Earl, is looking to rid the neighborhood of some other characters.

Next to the projects is an old boxcar that is the office of the last of the Italian, um, businessmen in the neighborhood. Tommy Elefante, known as The Elephant, is the only son of a made man who spent years in prison. The Elephant does small-scale jobs but stays away from drugs, which are taking over the mob's business model. An elderly Irish mobster visits one day with an odd story of something that he and the Elephant's father hid decades ago, and which will make their fortunes. Potts Mullan is an old-time square cop with only months to go before retirement, so he's looking to stay out of trouble.

Some of the characters don't know it, but they also are looking to fall in love. And those stories are among the sweetest tales that McBride has to tell.

McBride's story gains depth when the characters level with each other about the travails of living while black, whether it's a hardscrabble life they left behind in the South or the unkind streets of New York. Because the reader has come to know and care about these characters, when they turn serious their words carry all the more weight. And so do the author's words:

Sister Gee looked at the people staring at her ... She'd known most of them her whole life. They stared at her with that look that projects look: the sadness, the suspicion, the weariness, the knowledge that came from living a special misery in a world of misery. Four of their members were down ... And there would be more. The drugs, big drugs, heroin, were here. Nothing could stop it. ... Life in the Cause would lurch forward as it always did. You worked, slaved, fought off rats, the mice, the roaches, the ants, the Housing Authority, the cops, the muggers, and now the drug dealers. You lived a life of disappointment and suffering, of too-hot summers and too-cold winters, surviving in apartments with crummy stoves that didn't work and windows that didn't open and toilets that didn't flush and lead paint that flecked off the walls and poisoned your children, living in awful, dreary apartments built to house Italians who came to America to work the docks, which had emptied of boats, ships, tankers, dreams, money and opportunity the moment the colored and the Latinos arrived. And still New York blamed you for all its problems. ... 

But then, she thought, every once in a while there's a glimmer of hope.

That McBride makes that glimmer of hope work in such a city, in such a time, brings a little glimmer to the current darkness as well. This is a novel to enjoy and treasure.

Copyright Lynne Perednia 2020