![]() ![]() Deacon King Kong is the second nickname that locals gave Sportcoat due to his constant drinking of a homemade booze known as King Kong. The narrative flows seamlessly from buoyant and comical black jive to somber, pitch-perfect descriptives of the histories and hard lives of those doing the talking, many with nicknames: Hot Sausage, the Elephant, Lightbulb. ![]() But, significantly, it offers its inhabitants a view of the Statue of Liberty. Once dominated by newly arrived Italians, it now struggles with a racial and economic mix. ![]() It is also a witty sociological study of a waterfront Brooklyn community dotted with crummy apartments in high-rise housing projects - poor but lively, with derelict docks where crime and commerce mix. ![]() With Sportcoat and Hettie, who arrived at the Cause Houses neighborhood in 1945 as part of the great migration of Southern blacks, the novel becomes a moving love story. He is a bit Hamlet-like, talking to the ghost of his wife, Hettie, a beloved member of his church who was found dead in harbor waters two years before the shooting. With Sportcoat, a 71-year-old deacon at Five Ends Baptist Church, McBride has created a flawed but compelling and even heroic central figure. ![]()
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