I attempted this book (audiobook format). Either the dialogue was horrible, not well-suited for audio format, or performed badly. I couldn't finish it. ( )

This book is absolutely hysterical. The writing is amazing. The conversations between the character is so honest and funny. Mr. Everett did an awesome job writing this mystery. ( )

A must-read. Set in 2018. Excellent history/magical realism. Well written, clean story line.
Lots of swearing. ( )

Blackbird singing

Read by Dwayne Glaption
Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins

Wow! It’s really the only word needed to describe this excellent novel. But wait, there’s more.

Of course a synopsis won’t do. I have no desire to spoil this must-read for anyone. The genre? Well it’s dark and funny and tragic and mysterious all at once. It starts here.

In the neighborhood of Small Change in the town of Money, Mississippi a white family comprising of Charlene (Hot Mama Yellah), and Wheat, Granny C, Junior Junior and Lullabelle, gathers around an empty pool outside a grassless shotgun house. They are discussing using the pool to keep pigs in. Little do they know, but one of them is about to be murdered, his body mutilated, his scrotum stuffed into the hand of a dead black man.

So starts the story. I took notes for my review. A few will hopefully give y’all a flavor of this remarkable book..

“There’s be no First Amendment without the Second”
“If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns”
“When the trumpet sounds I’m outa here”
- Stickers on the deputy coroner’s rusted-out car.

The top coroner is called Reverend Fondel. A nasty fellow a KKK supporter who discovers he is black. Only one of many of Everett’s imagined characters, so exquisitely described that we can’t wait to meet the next one. Then there’s their names. Junior’s son Junior, Junior Junior, Mister Mister, Fondel, Hobsinger.MacDonald MacDonald, Pick L. Dill. Not since Dickens has a novel’s characters so matched their owners’.

“You kill em We chill ‘em”
“You stab ‘em we slab ‘em”
“You slay ‘em We slab ‘em”
Two detectives pay a visit to the Acme Cadaver Company. The receptionist has a tattoo on her neck, “Break here in case of emergency”. One of the detectives doesn’t get it. When they enter the warehouse Marvin Gaye is being played. The cadavers are kept head-to-toe on a conveyor belt. One cadaver is just male head, the rest of its pieces being scattered somewhere in Pennsylvania. Some employees are playing catch with an eye ball. Others play soccer with a head.

But it’s not all fun, and there’s some serious stuff going on. Seriously.

This is a book to read at leisure and to be taken very, very seriously. ( )

I get what he was going for here but it was too messy to work for me. ( )