Song of the Shank

This book is definitely in the literary fiction category of being a more time consuming read. It took me over 2 months. The shift in perspectives reminded me of Faulkner. I can enjoy literary fiction like this whereas I do not enjoy Infinite Jest or Gravity's Rainbow. My only complaint is I wanted m......more

This is a most challenging novel. Although the prose is majestic, and the writer so obviously talented, the pacing is laggard. This novel fictionalizes the story of Blind Tom Wiggins who apparently was quite the entertaining pianist from an early age, beginning around 6. The story is set in the year......more

Jeffrey Renard Allen has the writing chops to write a great novel but SONG OF THE SHANK is not that novel. Instead , this story is smothered beneath a prose that seems to have wrestled the lifeblood from this narrative about a blind slave boy who is a musical savant. Or is it, characters appear and......more

DNF'd at 100 pages. This was a curious book because of the choices that were made in writing style. I'm generally a fan of writing that requires a little more work (e.g. anything by Eimear McBride) as generally the extra effort is afforded a purpose. In the case of McBride the extreme stream-of-parti......more

Based on a true story of Blind Tom, a savant slave pianist, who can play anything he can hear once, this novel embellishes and invents enough to make this truly fiction, yet interesting as a statement about the time period nonetheless.......more