A Brief History of Seven Killings: A Novel - Marlon James

This is one of those books that when you first reading, you know that it is brillant. While I didn't slog though the first 100-200 pages, it was a bit slow, but then it really takes off and you don't want to put down the book, even if you are not huge Marley fan.

The title is misleading. The book might feel brief, but at 600 plus pages, it isn't. There are more than seven killings, and quite a bit of talk about rape and violence against women. Yet to not inlude this aspect would have made the book false considering the period and setting.

Marlon James tells the story in quite a few voices, and as such, despite the names at the beginnings of each section, he trusts the reader to be paying attention. Not everything is spelled out, and quite frankly if you have been playing attention, the ending shouldn't be surprising at all. I always love it when I read a book whose author doesn't think readers are idiots.