«Dazzling, spiritually rich.»

OPRAH magazine

«Peopled with wondrously quirky and charismatic individuals...both hilarious and affecting, the patter a treat, and in wise, drunk, old Sportcoat James McBride has given us a character for the ages.»

BIG ISSUE

«Hilarious...A rich and vivid multicultural history.»

TIME

«Deacon King Kong is full of heart, humor, and compassion...I say we give him another National Book Award for this one. It's that good.»

NPR

«Deacon King Kong reaffirms James McBride's position among the greatest American storytellers of our time.»

BOOKPAGE

«Perhaps you wouldn't expect your next great read to be a sort of comic opera set in a Brooklyn housing project circa 1969 starring a drink-addled church deacon named Sportcoat, his best friend Hot Sausage and a melancholic amateur gardener with mafia ties known as the Elephant. Best put on your seat belt, because McBride (The Good Lord Bird, Five-Carat Soul) will take you on a fast, funny, farcical ride.»

WASHINGTON POST

«McBride is operating in the realm of social allegory, a lineage that extends back through generations of writers: Ralph Ellison, Terry Southern, Darius James. Like them, he telegraphs his intentions through the use — or better yet, the reinvention — of history, which as Deacon King Kong progresses becomes a kind of floating opera, touching but not always overlapping with events as they occurred.»

LA TIMES

«Deacon King Kong cements McBride as a master storyteller.»

SHELF AWARENESS

«The sheer volume of invention in Deacon King Kong commands awe...And the sentences! The prose radiates a kind of chain-reaction energy.»

NEW YORKER