The Good Lord Bird: A Novel
By: James McBride / Narrated By: Michael Boatman
Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
As my husband LOVED this, I wanted to also. Alas, I formed my own opinion, and it’s not a grand one…
Seriously! My husband ordered this (In PRINT?!?) during the start of the pandemic, and it had him chortling and guffawing through the entirety of Sheltering In Place. As I’d gotten Deacon King Kong cuz o’ its Raves and was thus agreeably-minded towards the author, I snatched up The Good Lord Bird and chucked it out as my choice for our audiobook club Listen. Yessss, thought I: We three VIP Members (VIP cuz there’s ONLY 3) will be chuckling our brains out, howling with delight!
Uhm… Noooooo…
Don’t get me wrong. The book is suPERbly written, beautiful language, strong vernacular. And Michael Boatman throws everything he’s got, and then some, into his performance of the text.
It’s just that, I wound up spending 14+ hours making up excuses for our main character’s many Many MANY failings. Got to where I just plain wanted to throttle him.
Young Henry is “freed” by abolitionist and fanatic John Brown and has little choice but to follow the crazed old man as his Pa was killed. Dressed in a potato sack, fair-skinned and curly-haired, he’s mistaken for a girl and his name is heard as Henrietta.
And thus does Henry’s journey begin, following John Brown, running away from John Brown, working with John Brown (Even becoming the old man’s good luck charm/omen: “Little Onion”), coming to feel a great deal of affection for John Brown.
Oh, and? Screwing over pretty much everybody else as he goes along.
If there are important messages to be delivered, and Henry is entrusted with them? Too bad. As he putzes around in a self-absorbed haze, he’ll forget about it all, and usually other people, good people, die.
If there’s danger coming up, and Henry is in the vicinity, in a position to help? Too bad. As he hightails it into the bushes, he’ll simply watch atrocities occur. Author James McBride makes sure to add that Henry has a mournful thought afterwards but somehow, after me telling myself: He’s just a kid not a warrior, Of course p’raps his basic instincts for self-preservation kicked in, Uhm… p’raps he’s simply a bit of a coward, it all just came to be a bit too much. Henry is in it for Henry throughout the ENTIRE book.
There are a PLEthora of good people within the listening time, courageous Negroes (One woman in particular bracing up a young man about to be hanged—giving him courage, showing dignity as she herself is to be hanged), and people truly devoted to the Cause. So I KNOW McBride is capable of crafting characters who are admirable, or at leeeeeast likable. Alas, he did NOTHING with Henry.
Henry has several run-ins with courage, has several epiphanies, has several instances where he’d like to do better, to emulate the bravery of those around him. But McBride, I dunno, maybe going for whimsy? simply makes Henry a shallow, craven, ultra-horny coward. I felt absolutely nothing for him after I stopped making excuses for his desperately irresponsible choices, and by the end, where people were counting on him, where lives and entire plans were at stake? I absolutely LOATHED him.
McBride makes sure to show, in the end, how after the final devastation of battle, the whites who fought and captured John Brown ask only of the fates of white people, giving the Blacks nary a thought. The thing is? Henry doesn’t give them a single thought either, other than to use them to take their clothes so that he might escape, even as these others have decided they will live that oh so short time as free men and will die as free men in turn. Henry doesn’t see the bravery, neither does he admire the dignity. Nope, he’s just all ticked off that the clothes these men have stripped from themselves are too big.
And then he hightails it.
As the novel opens with this being the story based on papers found years later, and as Henry is shown to have continued to live and die as a worthless human being, I can’t even say that I was moved that all these brushes with true goodness, with being one of but a few survivors, touched him and inspired him to a greater life.
Nope.
My husband was mightily dismayed that we all had issues with the book, but I must say that I felt it a relief. Sometimes I worry that I’m too easily swayed, don’t have opinions of my own. But oh BOY did I ever have my own thoughts when it came to this one. Not necessarily an “I Want My Hours Back” as the writing truly is stellar, and Boatman’s performance of John Brown in particular make this a kinda sorta worthy listen.
But if ever we make an “I Wanted to Throttle the Main Character” category? Oh good golly gosh: This book would sooooo make it into that one!
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