… Marlon James fantastic novel A Brief History of Seven Killings which I reviewed earlier in the year.

As I said a month back when the finalists were announced, it was going to take something special to knock Marlon James off the high pedestal I’d put the book on.  And while Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island (review forthcoming) came close to supplanting the James, I was certain that the Man Booker judges, while showing great taste in nominating A Brief History as a finalist, would still choose A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara as this year’s winner.  So, I can’t tell you how happy I am to have my prediction proven wrong as James takes home the coveted prize.

I’ll end off this happy, happy news with the final paragraph of my review of A Brief History of Seven Killings:

Not everyone will be enamored by this powerful book.  Some will find the violence, both physical and sexual, to be confronting.  Others will stumble over the Jamaican patois or find the lack of likable characters hard to deal with (just read the one-star reviews on Amazon to see what I mean).  But as much as I enjoy escapist fiction, what I really crave is a novel, like A Brief History of Seven Killings, that genuinely gets under my skin, that forces me to engage, that makes me see the world differently.