It was a "slug-ugly" crime. Brothers George and Rufus Hamilton, in a robbery gone wrong, drunkenly bludgeoned a taxi driver to death with a hamm... read full description
reviews
Jan 07, 2010
karen
rated it: 
okay - it is time to write a proper review for this book, particularly since i have been recommending it like crazy over the past few days, and since it is out of print, i should at least make the effort to try to explain why you should make the effort, yeah?
but damned if i know where to start. cover-blurbs compare it to james baldwin and faulkner. is that a start? i haven't read baldwin, and i haven't liked the one faulkner i did read, so let me dig a little deeper...
it More...
but damned if i know where to start. cover-blurbs compare it to james baldwin and faulkner. is that a start? i haven't read baldwin, and i haven't liked the one faulkner i did read, so let me dig a little deeper...
it More...
30 comments
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(32 people liked it)
Nov 09, 2011
Greg
rated it:
This is the 200th book I've read this year. It's a milestone for my lack of having much of a life outside of going to work and going on aifaf on Sundays.
So, for my 200th book I thought about what I would read. I decided that I didn't want it to be one of the hard-boiled crime novels I'd been reading recently, and then I almost made it a Parker novel, which seemed sort of fitting since the Richard Stark novels have kind of been a running theme along with MMA for me in my reviews a More...
So, for my 200th book I thought about what I would read. I decided that I didn't want it to be one of the hard-boiled crime novels I'd been reading recently, and then I almost made it a Parker novel, which seemed sort of fitting since the Richard Stark novels have kind of been a running theme along with MMA for me in my reviews a More...
13 comments
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(14 people liked it)
Jan 18, 2010
Eh?Eh!
rated it:
The cover jumps up and down and screams "read me!" in a very annoying way. I would never have bought this on my own. Thank goodness for goodreads and goodreaders with good taste who recommend great books. From Canada!
This is an imagining of the story behind a real murder. I learned a touch of history about a place other than the USA, about how a group of African descendants came to Nova Scotia. The author is a distant relative of two brothers who were hanged and this f More...
This is an imagining of the story behind a real murder. I learned a touch of history about a place other than the USA, about how a group of African descendants came to Nova Scotia. The author is a distant relative of two brothers who were hanged and this f More...
56 comments
like
(25 people liked it)
Dec 16, 2009
Alan
rated it:
just come - from amazon, nice hardback.
Although I am being swept along by the torrent of his prose, I haven't got very far as I keep going back to re-read, and re-read again.
...stunning book. Vivid, intense, unrelenting, written by a poet about cousins of his who were hung for murder in 1949. The book uses real letters and notes and documents but is a fictionalisation of the titular brothers' lives and takes you through their violent upbringing in grindiong poverty and More...
Although I am being swept along by the torrent of his prose, I haven't got very far as I keep going back to re-read, and re-read again.
...stunning book. Vivid, intense, unrelenting, written by a poet about cousins of his who were hung for murder in 1949. The book uses real letters and notes and documents but is a fictionalisation of the titular brothers' lives and takes you through their violent upbringing in grindiong poverty and More...
4 comments
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(4 people liked it)
Oct 17, 2009
Bill
rated it:
Really excellent first novel by the Canadian poet George Elliott Clarke. Based on the true story of a murder of a taxicab driver in New Brunswick in 1949, the murderers are actually distantly related to the author. You can tell he's a poet as the writing is beautiful. Hopefully he'll write some more fiction.
5 comments
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(1 person liked it)
Jun 22, 2009
Kathy
rated it:
George and Rue was an amazing and beautifully written book! Clarke does more than tell story of a murder but the underlining situations and experiences that lead to the event. One of the most powerful lines in the book is (sorry I don't have the book so this is not a direct quote, but a paraphrase!) "Asa was raising niggers, not engineers". This line describes the experiences of the family in a nutshell, how the effects of racism and poverty are passed on from generation to generation.
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Feb 23, 2009
Rusty
rated it:
This is just brilliant. His mastery of words thrills me.
(And drives me to tears as he drops a line that is similar to a line from one of my slam poems... but his is better. Damn him! :)
(And drives me to tears as he drops a line that is similar to a line from one of my slam poems... but his is better. Damn him! :)
Aug 10, 2011
Debbie
rated it: 
Interesting story about a crime in the black slums of Halifax. Lots of history that I didn't know about the black community in Nova Scotia.
Dec 01, 2007
Marie
rated it: 
very dark book from a Canadian author depicting in novel form the true life story of his ancestors who are African-Canadians who murdered and were executed for it. Book had more potential than I thought he made of it - author kept a very removed tone from his characters, who were totally not redeemable nor fully fleshed out, and seemed to revel in the writing more than the story.
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