John Crow's Devil

John Crow's Devil

LC Class		PR9265.9.J358 J64 2005
Followed by	The Book of Night Women

John Crow's Devil is the 2005 debut novel by author

, with miracles woven into the plot similar.

Synopsis

Hector Bligh is a preacher in the small Jamaican town of Gibbeah, where his public struggles with alcoholism have earned him the nickname The Rum Preacher. Bligh's congregation tolerates his misbehavior while Bligh overlooks the sins and stray paths of his congregants.

This unspoken agreement is broken when a fire-and-brimstone preacher, Apostle York, abruptly appears during mass one day. York violently removes Bligh from the Pulpit and savagely beats him.

While Bligh recovers under the care of a villager, York assumes Bligh's congregation, residence, and church. The congregation is drawn to York's lead as he fills the spiritual vacuum left by Bligh's vacant and soft-hearted ministry. Bligh returns to the church only to find that his congregation no longer wants him and York is willing to resort to violence to repel him.

The story follows the two men as their conflict grows to biblical proportions.

Reception

The New York Times Book Review states that: "Writing with assurance and control, James uses his small-town drama to suggest the larger anguish of a postcolonial society struggling for its own identity. But he mixes this with an evocation of a cultlike religious fervor that recalls the People's Temple and the Jonestown massacre of the 1970's."^[1] In a 2015 review, The Independent wrote that the novel is "undoubtedly breathtaking for its imagination and its storytelling, its 78 rejections mystifying, but there seems to be a baroque, spectacular side to the darkness."^[2]

See also

Subsequent novels by Marlon James:

• The Book of Night Women (2009)
• A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014)

References

Extern links

• John Crow's Devil title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• John Crow's Devil at Library of Congress