McBride’s comedic language and timing are precise and dynamic.

At the same time, it is an incredibly funny novel. McBride imagines the project building not just as a setting but also as a living being that speaks, laughs, cries and, most importantly, loves.ĭeacon King Kong engages with serious issues including grief, poverty, drug use and gun violence, among others. The characters are mere microorganisms the Cause is the body. These are just a few of the threads that comprise the web of experiences that generate the book’s ultimate protagonist, the Cause Houses. These subplots are tied together by a mysterious link that reveals itself over time. Italian mobster Tommy Elephante, also known as the Elephant, is the neighborhood boogeyman who is pursuing a treasure hunt left behind by his deceased father. Soup is a recently released ex-convict and Nation of Islam convert who seeks to heal the community that he used to hurt. Aside from Sportcoat and Deems, there is Officer Potts Mullen, a worn-down white beat cop who yearns for the heart of cynical yet warm-hearted African American pastor’s wife Sister Gee. McBride, however, gives every character finely tuned identities and experiences. Such a web of interconnected relationships could produce confusion when from the pen of a less talented writer. The shooting shocks the community of the Causes Houses and nearby Five Ends Baptist Church and triggers a chain of subplots that McBride explores in touching and intriguing ways. In Deacon King Kong, the venerable James McBride’s first novel since winning the National Book Award in 2013 for The Good Lord Bird, a grief-stricken church deacon nicknamed Sportcoat shoots Deems, a 19-year-old drug dealer, at a Brooklyn-area housing project called the Cause Houses in 1969.

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