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    John Crow's Devil
    John Crow's Devil
    John Crow's Devil
    Audiobook8 hours

    John Crow's Devil

    Written by Marlon James

    Narrated by Robin Miles

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Novelist Marlon James had his first book nominated as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and his second book named a New York Times Editor's Choice. In this, his third novel, a failing preacher in 1957 Jamaica is ousted by a fiery newcomer who sends the congregation into a frenzy of spiritual awakening-and violence. "It's 150-proof literary rum guaranteed to intoxicate and enchant. Highly recommended."-Library Journal, starred review
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 8, 2011
    ISBN9781449866921
    John Crow's Devil
    Author

    Marlon James

    Marlon James was born in Jamaica. He is the author of John Crow’s Devil (Oneworld, 2015), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and The Book of Night Women (Oneworld, 2009), which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction. His third novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld 2014), won the Man Booker Prize in 2015, the American Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Fiction Prize, and was a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Esquire and Granta. He is currently the Writer-in-Residence and Associate Professor of English at Macalester College, Minnesota, USA.

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    Reviews for John Crow's Devil

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)One of the things I like the most about Akashic Books is that, unlike so many other small presses, they make a deliberate effort not to put out only an endless stream of mopey character dramas about white creative-classers living in Brooklyn; take for example one of their latest, John Crow's Devil, which is instead set in the backwoods of Jamaica in the 1950s, which like last year's Jesus Boy uses a conservative Christian church to tell a story surprisingly loaded with sex, violence and other deadly sins. And indeed, there's a reason that this literary debut from the Kingston immigrant and now Minnesota professor has been compared to both Toni Morrison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez; and that's because the text itself nearly reaches the level of magic realism from its pure poetic beauty, the story of the struggle between two local preachers of whom neither is nearly as innocent as they like portraying themselves. A dense and gripping novel that emotionally radiates like the heat of the Caribbean sun, it comes recommended to those who are fans of academic writing set in exotic locales.Out of 10: 8.7
    • 3/5
      PEARL RULE 9 (p74)I realized I need to leave the read behind here:"Shhh. Don't work your head about it too much. The Lord has forgiven me and as His faithful servant, I have forgiven Pastor Bligh. You know where he is?""Yes, Apostle.""Send him a message for me. Tell him that Apostle York says that he can come back."And here we go round the houses again. I liked the dialect that Author James uses in the story to delineate what everyone knows, versus what is being narrated:The plate was empty and refilled in minutes."Mind you choke," she said.The Widow appeared to smile but then she pushed her chair back into the dark before the {Rum} Pastor could confirm it. She ate nothing herself. Dinner was a noisy clutter of mouth sounds. Lips and gums slapping food with spit and teeth slicing, tearing, and chomping the whole thing down to paste, followed by the glorious gulp of a swallow.He was the only one doing the eating, so she must have been doing the watching. Women loved to watch men eat, he thought. It was the last blast of primal energy that the hunter-gatherer had left to show.***"Jeezus Christ! Him have fits!" said a man beside Bligh as he fell."Rahtid," said another."Unu fling this spoon in him mouth quick!" shouted the young bartender. "Bout him want bottle! You know say is a whole o Johnny Walker him go fi drink?""Him still a fits?""Is the Devil in him. Me read that in tha Bible," said the man nearest to Bligh, holding onto the spoon he had shoved in the Pastor's mouth.It's a technique used to make the story move and still retain the tang of Otherness this supernatural tale imparts. That's very effective, and to my mental ears very euphonious. I'm just not that deeply drawn in to the story. Rum Pastor Bligh's besetting sin is drink. I get it. Because I'm told explicitly why earlier in the story, I wasn't that interested in following his trajectory; because the very beginning is The End, I know where we're heading; and in the end, I just didn't feel like the view was worth the travail.Such a shame I didn't read this when it came out. I'd've liked it much better at forty-five than at sixty.
    • 4/5
      A story with a touch of magical realism and a heavy dose of religious fervor. Set in the author's native Jamaica at some point in the 1950's, it is the story of the battle between two flawed individuals, each who try to take control of a small fictional town.

      John Crow's Devil is an amazing first novel, with extremely interesting, well-developed characters. It's an interesting take on sin vs redemption. Neither the Rum Preacher or the Apostle are quite what they appear. It is easy to mock the townspeople of the fictional Gibbeah, but see if you can make it to the end of the story without being manipulated into looking at characters and actions in a particular way.
    • 5/5
      Near perfect first novel set in Jamaica. Two reverends battle for the soul of fledgling Jamaican village in the late 1950's. James uses a voice that many readers may deem difficult to follow, at first, but really I found it quite easy to slip into the dialect that he implements. It is a fine specimen of terse literature that gets out of the story's way and takes the reader out of their comfort zone without ever letting the reader think about putting the book down.Highly recommended.