Hold onto your hat and your hankie
Deacon King KongSet in New York in the 1960’s this is a roaring and insightful account of life and death in a dockside housing development. The central character is a permanently drunken church deacon and the story follows his antics and their effect on the church attending inhabitants, drug dealers and users, the mob, and the police. The author, James McBride, brilliantly channels authors like JP Donleavy, Tom Wolf, and Charles Dickens as he portrays the harsh conditions of slum life with remarkable insights and shafts of lacerating humour. Definitely not a read for the faint-hearted but essential literature, nonetheless.
