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Half-Blood Blues

3.64 of 5 stars 3.64 · rating details · 5,707 ratings · 913 reviews

Berlin, 1939. A young, brilliant trumpet-player, Hieronymus, is arrested in a Paris cafe. The star musician was never heard from again. He was twenty years old. He was a German citizen. And he was black.

Fifty years later, Sidney Griffiths, the only witness that day, still refuses to speak of what he saw. When Chip Jones, his friend and fellow band member, comes to visit, r...more

Paperback, 336 pages

Published February 28th 2012 by Picador (first published September 1st 2011)

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Dec 30, 2011 karen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: real-people-fake-stories, distant-lands, upstairs-neighbors

i'm glad this book didn't win the damn booker. that just means it wasn't a complete snoozefest. Vernon God Little? thumbs down. The Gathering? bleah. Wolf Hall? zzzzz. G.?? not his best. and from what i hear of this year's winner, the barnes? is not positive reviews, kiddies.

so i'm glad this book escaped that label, because when this book is good, it sparkles like a thousand year old vampire in the sun. and i was halfway through before i realized this was an authoress. not that it matters, but t...more

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Sep 27, 2012 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: Booker shortlist 2011

Shelves: booker, war, race, historical-fiction, challenging, holocaust, europe

I really enjoyed reading this book. I even thought that it was even a notch better than the eventual Booker winner last year, Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending. The only difficulty I had with this book is Edugyan's writing style. There are some sentences that are verbose. Her choices of words seem to me as not exact even using my limited vocabulary as the yardstick. Lastly, there also seem to to be some grammatically incorrect sentences. I first thought that the slight variations to conventi...more I really enjoyed reading this book. I even thought that it was even a notch better than the eventual Booker winner last year, Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending. The only difficulty I had with this book is Edugyan's writing style. There are some sentences that are verbose. Her choices of words seem to me as not exact even using my limited vocabulary as the yardstick. Lastly, there also seem to to be some grammatically incorrect sentences. I first thought that the slight variations to conventional grammar could be attributed to the fact that her characters were supposedly Europeans and non-English native speakers. But those sentences were in the narration and not part of the spoken dialogues.

But if you try to forgive or go beyond those minor and really unimportant annoyances, the story is amazingly engaging. Half Blood Blues is about the 20-y/o Hieronymous Falk, a German black man. He was a pianist and he was arrested by German soldiers in a cafe during the fall of Paris in World War II.

The book is divided into six parts with the milieus and time going back and forth. Three cities: Paris, Berlin, Poland in 1939-1940 (flashback) particularly leading to the arrest or disappearance of Hiero and 1992 (present time) when his friends, Chip and Sid (the narrator), now in the eighties, are remembering Hiero. Just like that Barnes' novel, Sid is also an unreliable narrator because he withheld his participation in the arrest of his friend. Think of it like The Kite Runner meets with Shining Through because of Holocaust as its backdrop. Then don't forget to play some jazz music playing in the background as this book has music as part of its grand ensemble.

Since I am not really a jazz fan, my takeaway from this book is what I learned about that district near the border of France & Germany where France allowed to be populated by Black immigrants. These Blacks came from their former colonies in Africa. I think the idea was that France considered these black immigrants as second-class citizens so they seemed to me as the "disposables." The main protagonist, Hiero, is part of this population.

Because of this fact, it was easy for me to sympathize to Hiero's character and it kept me leafing through the pages to find out what was the role of his white friend, Sid, on his arrest.

Well worth my money and time.(less)

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Nov 20, 2011 Barbara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, giller, historical-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The story of Half-Blood Blues revolves around two African-American jazz musicians, Sid and Chip, as well as Hiero, a wunderkind half-German, half-Senegalese trumpet player. The action begins in 1939 Berlin and then moves between 1992 Berlin and Poland, and 1939 Paris.

Here’s what I loved about Half-Blood Blues: the crackling dialogue, the history, and the brilliant beginning of the novel. The cover is absolutely gorgeous, and once you develop an ear for the dialect, the book is quick to read.

Unfo...more The story of Half-Blood Blues revolves around two African-American jazz musicians, Sid and Chip, as well as Hiero, a wunderkind half-German, half-Senegalese trumpet player. The action begins in 1939 Berlin and then moves between 1992 Berlin and Poland, and 1939 Paris.

Here’s what I loved about Half-Blood Blues: the crackling dialogue, the history, and the brilliant beginning of the novel. The cover is absolutely gorgeous, and once you develop an ear for the dialect, the book is quick to read.

Unfortunately, many things in Half-Blood Blues bothered me. As soon as the characters go into hiding from the Nazis, the pace crawls. Perhaps this tempo is a result of Sid the narrator becoming a passive observer of events. He just watches all the other characters take action. This passivity meant I couldn’t get a good sense of who Sid really was, and that affected how I perceived the relationships in the book. I did not get the feeling that he was particularly ambitious (one of the possible motivations in the story, but he gets over slights quickly) and I kept wondering what the story would be like if another character had told it.

I would have loved to have seen more of an exploration of identity, half-bloodedness (as the title suggests), and the irony that African-Americans went to interwar Europe to escape the racism back home. These elements are touched upon by Sid mentioning that some of his family pass for white, his girlfriend Delilah’s “mixed-race face”, and rival Hiero’s stories about who his father was. One of the telling details I really liked was the shocking visit to Hamburg’s Hagenbecks Zoo.

But there are many contradictory details: For example, Hiero carries his trumpet with him everywhere, then suddenly does not have it with him when they flee Berlin; Sid and Chip are able to give a history lecture to Louis Armstrong about German culture, but they don’t know that France has declared war on Germany. Also, the idea that a black man was able to live peacefully in a remote Polish village during communism, doesn’t jive with my experiences of visible minorities in Eastern Europe.

As well, Sid is aware that he speaks with a dialect and claims Hiero has transposed the dialect into German. But Hiero doesn’t understand English, so how does he create a Baltimore-German accent? It’s also linguistically questionable because German has a different syntax.

There are flashes of genius when the characters start to talk about friendship, love, art and sacrifice, but the heart of the discussion comes too late in the book and ends too soon.

Half-Blood Blues did give me with a chance to witness Nazi-occupied Europe through a new lens, but I find myself looking to Edugyan’s reading list at the end of the book, to help provide the grit and details of how a person like Hiero would have survived.
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Dec 27, 2011 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jennifer (aka EM) by: debra

This book was ok. I didn't love love love it - I found it hard to get into (that could be because I was reading it amidst a house full of people, though). The language of the intriguingly-unreliable narrator seemed contrived (compared to George Rue, which did a better job of a similar patois).

I would have liked more music - she did a great job describing the first-person feeling of playing music, but a less good job really bringing the jazz scene in Nazi Germany / Paris in the 30s to life.

---E...more

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Mar 18, 2012 Andree rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

This book, well, It's probably more 3.5 stars.

I liked it. I did. It just wasn't my favourite book ever. I do think it was well done. It's definitely interesting. It jumps between present-day and Germany at the start of WWII and centres around a group of black Jazz musicians. I never really thought about the black community in Germany during the wars. When you think of the horrors committed against people during that time period, they're not the first group that comes to mind for obvious reasons....more

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Aug 22, 2012 David Hallman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I’m not sure if there is a social trend going on, or if it’s just the books that I’m drawn to currently, or if literary prize juries happen to be sharing my particular obsession, but I’m reading a lot of books these days about memory.

Some of them are outstanding – Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead” tops my personal favourite list and walked off with the Pulitzer Prize several years ago.

Some of them leave me quite cold – Julian Barnes 2011 Man/Booker Prize winning “The Sense of an Ending” falls into t...more I’m not sure if there is a social trend going on, or if it’s just the books that I’m drawn to currently, or if literary prize juries happen to be sharing my particular obsession, but I’m reading a lot of books these days about memory.

Some of them are outstanding – Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead” tops my personal favourite list and walked off with the Pulitzer Prize several years ago.

Some of them leave me quite cold – Julian Barnes 2011 Man/Booker Prize winning “The Sense of an Ending” falls into this category. I found it a major disappointment.

Esi Edugyan’s “Half-Blood Blues”, a finalist for this year’s Man Booker Prize, stands head and shoulders above the winner in my humble opinion. (When are the Man/Booker organizers finally going to accept my offer to chair the jury?)

The good folk at the Scotiabank Giller competition must have been more sensitive to my vibes. They made the right choice in awarding the 2011 prize to Edugyan’s evocative story about the struggles of a small collective of jazz players in Berlin and Paris at the outbreak of World War II. Edugyan has a stunning capacity to replicate dialects in her characters. Her description of the transcendence of the music is so lyrical I wish there had been more such passages.

But back to the issue of memory. The focus of the “Half-Blood Blues” story is the frightful permanence of some memories one would prefer to forget and the ephemeral nature of other memories that have life-sustaining capacity. Writing also in two parallel time-lines is a technique that Edugyan pulled off note-perfect. I’m appreciative of this style in part because of my own use of it in my memoir “August Farewell.”

I had the privilege of hearing Esi Edugyan (and other Giller and Man/Booker nominees) speak at the International Festival of Authors this past October in Toronto. She has such an articulate and intelligent modesty, I wanted to whisk her away for a long conversation about writing over multiple glasses of wine. I had no such luck. The IFOA organizers and the rest of the IFOA audience, not to mention her husband and six-week old child had stronger claims on her time and attention.

* * *

Information on Esi Edugyan's "Half-Blood Blues" available at http://amzn.to/SSjjVG

Information on my memoir “August Farewell” and my novel “Searching for Gilead” available on my website at http://DavidGHallman.com
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Jun 28, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: recent-reads, book-club-reads

set in berlin and paris at the end of the 1930's when these two countries are on the verge of war, this book tells the little known history of jazz during this era. more importantly, it recounts a small part of what african-born germans and black americans in germany encountered during this time.

the narrator is sid, a bass player, and member of a jazz band in berlin. we get most of the story in alternating chapters: past and present. in 1992-1993, a documentary is made about the recording of "ha...more

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Apr 29, 2012 Shomeret rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, around-the-world, my-reviews

Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan was an eye-opener for me because I had no previous exposure to Afro-German Holocaust victims. In fact, I was unaware that they existed. In this novel, Hieronymus Falk, an Afro-German musician is arrested by the Gestapo and disappears. The tale is told by an Afro-American musician who played with him. The narrator is both unreliable and increasingly unsympathetic. This caused me to dislike the book. I wish it had been written from Hieronymus Falk's viewpoint and th...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, world-war-2, racism, france, germany, music, maryland

An unusual novel and Booker Prize finalist which uniquely brings to life the story of a group of young black jazz musicians in Berlin and Paris in the period before and soon after Hitler's takeover of France.

The narrative is told from the perspective of the bassist Sid, both then and fifty years later, as he heads from his home in Baltimore with his drummer friend from the old group to attend a documentary about them in Berlin. This revives memories of the disaster of the Nazi apprehension of t...more

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Mar 17, 2012 Babydoll rated it 3 of 5 stars

“Ain’t no man can outrun his fate”. -Sid

The rich melodious hues of jazz reverberates within the pages Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan, as she delivers an interesting story of music, love, and betrayal between three members of the fictional legendary jazz band, The Hot-Time Swingers. Their lives are reflected intermittently between the periods of 1940 Paris and Poland in 1992 as the mystery of one of their members’ disappearance is unfolded through the voice of the main character, Sidney.

“Time ai...more “Ain’t no man can outrun his fate”. -Sid

The rich melodious hues of jazz reverberates within the pages Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan, as she delivers an interesting story of music, love, and betrayal between three members of the fictional legendary jazz band, The Hot-Time Swingers. Their lives are reflected intermittently between the periods of 1940 Paris and Poland in 1992 as the mystery of one of their members’ disappearance is unfolded through the voice of the main character, Sidney.

“Time ain’t no steady thing. The speed it move at depend entirely upon the speed you moving at yourself”. -Sid

The novel opens in 1940 Paris. The atmosphere has swelled with fear since the Germans have advanced and completely taken over. The city is eerily quiet and desolated from the thousands of people who have vacated after receiving warning of the upcoming advancement of the Germans, following the withdrawal of the French to protect the city. However, within a strikingly dangerous time in Paris, an interminable love of jazz and a pressing desire to record a disc with one another, served as the sole deliverance of peace and sanity for three young musicians within the throes of war.

“ We was a kind of family, as messed-up and dysfunctional as any as you could want”. -Sid

Written in first person narrative form, readers are ushered into the story by the protagonist, Sidney Roscoe Griffiths “Sid”. He is presented as a man with keen instincts, envious tendencies, and selfish traits that will not only change the course of the legendary jazz history, but will test the loyalty of a friendship. His childhood friend from his hometown of Baltimore and band mate, Charles C. Jones “Chip” was my favorite character in the novel. Out of all the band members, he was the bravest, with a fearless persona, brash sense of humor, and of charming sensibilities.

“The kid’s existence might’ve been a fiction we’d all cooked up if that disc hadn’t survived. Today you ain’t no kind of horn player you don’t acknowledge some debt to Hieronymus Falk. He was one of the pioneers: a German Louis Armstrong, if you will”. -Sid

In Half Blood Blues, the antagonist character and the key figure in the plot is Hieronymus Thomas Falk “Heiro”, the German native who is the pulse of the Hot-Time Swingers band. Often referred to as “the kid” by his band mates for being the youngest member of the group, his innate skills as a brilliant trumpet player made him a jazz legend. However, his sudden disappearance during the rise of his career made his life an unsettling mystery. It is through the narration of the story by Sid, that readers discover what truly happened to the young musical genius.

Author Esi Edugyan created a delightful read that is even paced, and inclusive of memorable characters. Her sentence structures often included the usage of metaphors to provide descriptions in a more creative manner. I was also impressed with the setting of the story being in France, because most novels that I have read that consist of a plot surrounding the musical genre of jazz, is written with a North American setting. Although I was not fond of the way in which the novel ended, I was satisfied with the overall story. I recommend this book to others.

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Mar 03, 2013 Jeffrey rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The premise of the novel is a good one: black Jazz band in Nazi Berlin...but it is TED I OUS...the plot is unfathomable, the writing is 'creative 101' oh, lets do first person...only it irritates the reader and fails on description and indeed, any form of engaging language.
After chapter two, I stopped, read a few more later in the book and the last chapter and was not disappointed - it went in the trash.

A poor plot, characters that do not engage, and only a page turned in so much as you long to...more

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Feb 19, 2013 Denis Farley rated it 5 of 5 stars

Just started in, another holiday gift, this from my sister and brother-in-law, Shawna & Dick. Looks like I've settled in for another (gone fishing), excursion ha ha, bon voyage!

Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan, is a story set in Berlin and Paris, during the late '30s, as told by the bassist in a fictional band, like a memoir, flashing back and forth between that time of their youth, and then their old age. Very well done, marvelous language, both descriptive and the vernacular of the musician...more

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Apr 07, 2012 Gregory Baird rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-booklist, fiction-literature

"That was why I come. Not to find a friend, but to finally, and forever, lose one."

The downside of being an avid reader is that you can go through a great deal of books without really connecting to one. It's not that you're jaded, just that at a certain point it takes more to really impress you. There are, after all, only so many stories a person can tell, so plots become cliched, characters become familiar. But every once in a while a voice comes along that makes you sit up and pay attention. A...more "That was why I come. Not to find a friend, but to finally, and forever, lose one."

The downside of being an avid reader is that you can go through a great deal of books without really connecting to one. It's not that you're jaded, just that at a certain point it takes more to really impress you. There are, after all, only so many stories a person can tell, so plots become cliched, characters become familiar. But every once in a while a voice comes along that makes you sit up and pay attention. A voice that takes familiar notions and makes them feel fresh--alive. It sends a shiver down your spine when it happens. That is exactly what happened to me when I picked up Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues--right from the first page, when she wrote "we lay exhausted in the flat, sheets nailed over the windows. The sunrise so fierce it seeped through the gaps, dropped like cloth on our skin. Couple hours before, we was playing in some back-alley studio, trying to cut a record. A grim little room, more like a closet of ghosts than any joint for music, the cracked heaters lisping steam, empty bottles rolling all over the warped floor."

If I had to describe Half-Blood Blues very quickly I'd say that it's like Cabaret crossed with Amadeus with a dash of Atonement, but that wouldn't exactly do it justice. The plot follows the Hot-Time Swingers: jazz musicians who were on the brink of greatness until World War II broke out and shattered their lives forever. First we have Sid Griffiths, our narrator, whose passion for music fills every pore on his body (on his first experience hearing jazz in a speakeasy: "I was in love. Pure and simple. This place, with its stink of sweat and medicine and perfume; these folks, all gussied up never mind the weather--this, this was life to me."). His passion leads him and his childhood friend Chip away from Baltimore and all the way to Germany, where there's a great deal of excitement about the burgeoning jazz scene. They have to go a little underground once the Nazis come to power, but leaving would be impossible to Sid. Especially after they hook up with Hieronymous "Hiero" Falk, a young prodigy who both inspires and infuriates Sid with his natural talent. Sid advocates for the kid but can't help but undermine him in increasingly less subtle ways, acting as something of a Salieri to Hiero's Amadeus. "I admit it," Sid notes. "He got genius in spades. Cut him in half, he still worth three of me, It ain't fair. It ain't fair that I struggle and struggle to sound just second-rate, and the damn kid just wake up, spit through his horn, and it sing like nightingales. It ain't fair. Gifts is divided so damn unevenly." They eventually escape to Paris with the help of the haunting jazz singer Delilah, and while this should have been their saving grace, it ends up being their downfall.

But this is only half of the story. The other half takes place in 1992, when Sid and Chip are invited back to Berlin to attend the premier of a documentary honoring the memory of Hiero, who was arrested by the Gestapo after the Nazis occupied France, and never seen again (this is no spoiler, by the way. It happens in the first chapter, and the narrative goes back and forth between WWII and 1992 to flesh out the details). The journey to Berlin stirs intense feelings of pain and guilt in Sid, but the truth is that these emotions have never been unfamiliar to him in the decades since Hiero vanished. Sid may be the narrator, but it is Hiero who drives the plot, whose spectral presence haunts every page.

It's a story of passion, jealousy, and betrayal, and while these elements feel familiar (and at times predictable), it is impossible not to fall under Edugyan's spell. Her writing is beautiful, and the way she weaves all of the plot elements together belies the incredible craftsmanship it must have taken to make it all feel so organic. Sid is an incredibly contradictory character; he says " I guess folk just ain't built to be faithful to nothing, not even to pain. Not even when it their own," but the way he has lived his life shows that he has never been able to forget the hurts inflicted on him by Hiero and Delilah, let alone the pain he caused them. Sid has lived with this ache but he is incapable of confronting it directly. I don't think it is unfair to say that when he travels back to Berlin he is hoping to finally find some form of release from his memories. So despite these contradictions Sid never feels false; on the contrary, the fact that he is at odds with himself is the very thing that brings him to vibrant life. Edugyan even pulls off one of my most common gripes when she briefly introduces Louis Armstrong as a character. Now, I generally roll my eyes when an author inserts a real person into a historical novel, but that's because most writers do it in the most clumsy, contrived manner possible. Not so with Edugyan. Armstrong's place in the story feels natural, organic. She doesn't just put him there for kicks--she makes him an integral force in the plot.

I hadn't so thoroughly enjoyed a novel this much since I read The Dubious Salvation of Jack V. last summer. Falling under a book's spell is a thrilling experience, and I sincerely hope that you enjoy Half-Blood Blues as much as I did.
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Nov 04, 2012 Jonathan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So far I'm obsessed w/ this. It's amazing how Edugyan evokes the rhythm and feel of jazz with her storytelling and dialogue. What's more, the story explores fascinating issues of identity and politics with a light touch. And it's creatively structured to boot. I can't wait to see how this story begins/ends...

Update: This is one of my favorite novels in recent memory, maybe ever. It's difficult to put down, because it's just so propulsive. Edugyan is one of those big-hearted authors who can make...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Elina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book gave me a new perspective of WWII Germany and Paris which was really interesting. I also knew nothing about jazz in that age. I have a heard time enjoying books in which the narrator is not a likeable character and I often find myself angry at the protagonist, but that also reflects how good the writing was.

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Jul 26, 2012 Bernie Charbonneau rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone who enjoys a great story!

Shelves: canadian-author, ebook

WOW! This is one fabulous tale! This was the Giller Award for 2011 in Canadian Lit. and has won numerous other awards and I must say very well deserved. I do not give 5 stars liberally, a novel must have a certain "grab" factor for my highest nomination, and this has it in spades. The flow and prose of this novel is so captivating that I was continuously using the annotations feature on my ereader. I have read a couple of Giller prize winners in the past (want to give a fellow Canuck props when...more

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Jan 12, 2012 Dana Burgess rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Esi Edugyan is an absolutely gorgeous woman and she has written an absolutely gorgeous book called Half-Blood Blues. I am ashamed to say I had never heard of it despite the fact it was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award, and the Man Booker Prize and a winner of the Scotia Bank Giller Prize. Add to that, I was messing around on amazon.ca and discovered that the amazon powers-that-be list this gem among the top 100 books of 2011. Still I a...more

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Apr 10, 2013 June rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The story revolves around the plight of a jazz band caught in Germany at the beginning of the Second World War. Told by a member of the band,Sid, the author maintains the use of the vernacular throughout. Initially this device feels a little strange but, as the story develops, the language flows very easily, especially the dialogue. Although it is primarily Sid's story, the other characters, Delilah, Hiero and Chip are well developed by the author with strong personalities, some strange and some...more

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Apr 05, 2013 Larry rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. “Jazz. Here in Germany it become something worse than a virus. We was all of us damn fleas, us Negroes and Jews and low-life hoodlums, set on playing that vulgar racket, seducing sweet blond kids into corruption and sex…”.

So says Sid, now an elderly retired American jazz musician, going back to Germany where he lived and played with other black and Jewish musicians in the twenties and thirties. Half-Blood Blues jumps between the present, with Sid and Skip, former band-mates, returning to Berlin...more “Jazz. Here in Germany it become something worse than a virus. We was all of us damn fleas, us Negroes and Jews and low-life hoodlums, set on playing that vulgar racket, seducing sweet blond kids into corruption and sex…”.

So says Sid, now an elderly retired American jazz musician, going back to Germany where he lived and played with other black and Jewish musicians in the twenties and thirties. Half-Blood Blues jumps between the present, with Sid and Skip, former band-mates, returning to Berlin for an event honouring one of their other band-mates, and the past – the post-WWI and pre-WWII jazz scene in Berlin and Paris.

Berlin in the 1920s had been a magnet for black American musicians who were far more appreciated, and better able to earn a living, than in the US. As Sid described it: “Oh Berlin, our beautiful Berolina, our charcoal life. What a city this was, after that first war. And all of us poor, antsy, fetching to know what more life held. I been a latecomer, didn’t hit these streets till ’27, but man was she beautiful.”

The historic setting and characters are fascinating. With the coming of the Nazis, the wide-open jazz culture was gradually coming under attack, and the musicians saw the writing on the wall, just barely escaping to Paris before it was too late – only to be overtaken again by the invading Germans.

Set against the opening of WWII, Sid also chronicles the wonderful times and the turmoil with his fellow band members, including a disastrous love triangle. Toward the end of the book, the plot seems to morph into Ian McEwan’s Atonement - Sid disclosing to a former band-mate that he had done something that led, unexpectedly, to his band-mate being put in a concentration camp.

It was a very interesting look at an interesting historic period. And author Esi Edugyan presented the dialog in what seems to be an authentic rendering of the patter of jazz musicians of the era. Being Canadian, she also slipped in one hilarious scene for fellow Canadians. Sid had just hopped in a cab in Baltimore to go to the airport. He’s in a bad mood. The cabbie asks where he is going, and Sid says London.

“ “London?” the cabbie said. “No kidding. I used to live in London. England’s alright but the food’ll kill you. Whereabouts you live over there?” I frowned. I ain’t got no mind for this damn small talk. Best to shut him up quick. “Not London, England,” I said. “London, Ontario. In Canada”. The cabbie’s eyes sort of glazed over. Canada kills any conversation quick, I learned long ago. It’s a little trick of mine.”
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Mar 16, 2013 Yvonne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: around-the-world, historical-fiction, international-setting, set-in-berlin, set-in-paris, library-book, literary-fiction, booker-prize

I was initially attracted to this book because of my husband's obsession with ken Burn's documentaries and I remember the History of Jazz playing as background for several days. I saw this book was around the time period of Louis Armstrong in Paris and this story was also about a young virtuoso trumpet player. In fact, Louis Armstrong makes a cameo appearance.

This book swept me away to that time period of 1939-40 Berlin & Paris with the Nazi campaign in full bloom. Hieronymus is a Mischling...more I was initially attracted to this book because of my husband's obsession with ken Burn's documentaries and I remember the History of Jazz playing as background for several days. I saw this book was around the time period of Louis Armstrong in Paris and this story was also about a young virtuoso trumpet player. In fact, Louis Armstrong makes a cameo appearance.

This book swept me away to that time period of 1939-40 Berlin & Paris with the Nazi campaign in full bloom. Hieronymus is a Mischling, a product of a black father and white mother in Germany. While African Americans (especially if they're musicians) at this time are generally left alone (before America entered the war), it's no cakewalk for them and things are increasingly more tense. The German natives like Hieronymus are treated even more poorly. But he's got talent and is rescued from his life of poverty by a wealthy German Jew and ends up in the band with Sid & Chip. Sid's our narrator and as others have pointed out, the story hinges on him being an unreliable narrator.

We start the story with Hieronymus' arrest in a Paris cafe by the gestapo or boots as they're called in this book. The story then swings forward to 1992 where Sid & Chip reunite and agree to go back to Berlin to participate in a film documentary specifically about Hieronymus but also about their lives as jazz musicians of that time We're then treated to flashback to Berlin & Paris, to tell the complete story of what happened. The flashback's were done in such a way that I wasn't bothered by them.

I was interested all the way in this one. I think if you're going to have any problems in the story it's probably the dialect this is written in and how it changes from each section. I think it's just done to reflect the changing years and how people spoke then & in 1992. Once I got used to it, I had no problems reading it. In fact, it added to the charm of the story.

I really loved reading this story. The main characters are an interesting study especially Sid who's petty & kindhearted, loving & jealous, sympathetic & unsympathetic. I think if he had hindsight he would have done things differently and the fact that we have that and more means that we can be judgmental of him. But we're all just flawed human beings and the best of us can be selfish even at the most dangerous of times.

I found this story engrossing. I wished for a better wrapped up ending, but that seems to be my wish for a lot of books. This was still a good book. Recommended.(less)

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Feb 12, 2013 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tormented, jealous and grief stricken. Sid Griffiths is an ordinary person caught up in an extraordinary time with the freakishly talented Hieronymus Falk. Jazz players in the same band, Hiero is "the kid", a genius everyone except Sid recognises, until the chasm between their talents becomes blindingly obvious.

This story flicks between Germany and Paris in 1939/40 and Europe in 1994. It's a heart tearing story of selfish betrayals mixed with real tenderness. These complicated people are so aliv...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Kristin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I enjoyed this book, but felt that the first half of the book went quite slow. It took me until the second half of the book to start appreciating the characters and the story. The basic storyline follows a group of jazz musicians at the start of Nazi Germany, and then as they flee into Paris, France (a group of African-Americans, and a black German). The story is set in this time period, but really focuses on the relationships between the characters and less on the story's context.

I have to say...more

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Jan 09, 2013 Rachelfm rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: europe, favorite, 121-in-2013, 60-books-by-women-2013

Wow. I just finished this book this morning. It's hard to truly express what a book like this can mean to a reader, but as close as I can get is that a great author will take you to a time, a place, a life, and a sound that you never thought much about and make it vitally important, essentially to your mind and heart.

The story follows a persecuted jazz group on the run from Berlin to Paris as the Nazis begin to overrun Europe in the late 1930s. The group is composed of several black Americans fr...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Margaret Sankey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In 1939 Berlin, the hottest jazz band was the Hot-Time Swingers--two black guys from Baltimore, a von son of an industrialist, a Jewish piano player and Hieronymous Falk, a mischling, child of a Senegalese French soldier and a German Rhinelander during the 1923 occupation. As the Nazis tighten their grip of persecution, the band flees to Paris with the help of Louis Armstrong, but the "boots" follow soon after, and Falk, with no American passport, as a jazz man and as the living symbol of German...more

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Nov 16, 2012 Karl Lagerfeld rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My work book club selected Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues (which won the Giller prize this year) and I wasn't expecting to like it (me and my work book club's views don't generally mesh) but I was instantly drawn into the writing and the story. The book follows a group of black jazz musicians playing in Berlin before the start of World War II and follows their eventual exile into Paris. The book cuts between the present day, when the surviving members of the band are brought together for a reuni...more

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Oct 04, 2012 ·Karen· rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: canada

This is a mystery to me. It has some excellent ingredients, but it doesn't meld into a potion that has any power to engage, and I can't quite work out why. The narrative voice I found warm, the friendly banter between characters amusing, the historical background of interest and well rendered, so what went wrong? Why did I end up hopping an' skipping over pages and pages, merely in order to find out if my suspicions were confirmed at the end? Yes, indeed, I had a horrible feeling that was exactl...more

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Oct 03, 2012 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This story about a German-American jazz band in Berlin in 1939 isn't something I'd normally be drawn to. It was a book club pick, so I stuck with it. While jazz isn't something I enjoy or even "get", it was the backdrop for the story and didn't overwhelm me. I do have to say that I have a better appreciation for what musicians and lovers of that type of music feel and experience while playing or listening to jazz. So the story follows the members of The Hot-Time Swingers as they become popular i...more

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Aug 30, 2012 Booknblues rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It is easy to see why Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues was a finalist for the Booker Prize, as it was a real delight to read. Edugyan so deftly manages to tell the story from the perspective of Sid Griffiths, an elderly African American man that the reader feels as if she were in the room with him. Sid is about to embark on a trip to Germany with his life long friend Chip to honor Hieronymus Falk or Hiero the Kid, a fellow bandmate of theirs who disappeared immediately after World War II.

Germany d...more It is easy to see why Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues was a finalist for the Booker Prize, as it was a real delight to read. Edugyan so deftly manages to tell the story from the perspective of Sid Griffiths, an elderly African American man that the reader feels as if she were in the room with him. Sid is about to embark on a trip to Germany with his life long friend Chip to honor Hieronymus Falk or Hiero the Kid, a fellow bandmate of theirs who disappeared immediately after World War II.

Germany during the Cabaret era was a heady time for jazz musicians, but it all turned sour as the Nazis gained power. We follow the band from Germany to Paris as Chip remembers. The book moves back and forth between the past and the present and we get a glimpse of the fragile relationships among the band members. Hiero was a black German and as such subject to the laws of the land and Sid and Chip were Americans and protected by their nationality. As Edugyan explains:

"Remember, there was no on-paper legislation against blacks so they were often admitted to work camps on trumped-up charges and under various crimes. Some were interned as Communists, or as immigrants, who wore the blue badge. Or as homosexuals, who wore the pink badge or as repeat criminals, who wore the green badge, or asocials, who wore the black badge. Even more obscuring is that the asocial group included the homeless, pimps, pickpockets, murderers, homosexuals and race defilers, so that it's even more difficult to figure out who among them was black. These people are lost in the dark maw of history.

I loved Sid's voice, crotchety yet humorous. I found myself reluctant to put the book down and wanting to keep Sid as a friend for life. Here Chip tells of the show opening to honor Hiero:

"The minder sat Chip in the front row among the VIPs. Set him down like an old sack of potatoes between two gents we ain't known from Adam Then he led me to the other end of the same row, taking the seat beside mine. That surprised me. Guess I reckoned he'd file old Jones and me side by side, seeing as how we was a package deal."

I heartily recommend this book for anyone interested in the times.
"Our minder led me and Chip through the nightmare of a foyer into the theatre(less)

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Aug 02, 2012 AliceinWonderland rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

TIP: You have to get past the 1st chapter to really get into this book and accustomed to the main character's so-called "distinctive German-American slang", because the rhythm is not typical and takes awhile to get accustomed to.
- After that, however, the pace and language becomes easier to read.
- Edugyan is a good writer, no doubt about that. There are certain phrases in the book which are just beautiful, BUT...
- The main thing that irked me immensely is the inconsistency of Sid's voice. I unde...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Lydia Laceby rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Originally reviewed at Novel Escapes

Unfortunately Half-Blood Blues, the 2011 Giller Prize winner, didn’t live up to the hype. The novel appealed to me on several levels, but I found it was mostly whiny men struggling over a woman rather than struggling with racial and war time issues and that of their music and it all seemed a bit *gasp* boring and anti-climactic to me.

There were lyrical, poignant and thought provoking descriptions in this novel and some of the sentences invoked wonder as I sto...more Originally reviewed at Novel Escapes

Unfortunately Half-Blood Blues, the 2011 Giller Prize winner, didn’t live up to the hype. The novel appealed to me on several levels, but I found it was mostly whiny men struggling over a woman rather than struggling with racial and war time issues and that of their music and it all seemed a bit *gasp* boring and anti-climactic to me.

There were lyrical, poignant and thought provoking descriptions in this novel and some of the sentences invoked wonder as I stopped and went ‘wow’. But as much as these existed, I never really felt the characters connection to their passion, to the music. It never seemed well described to me which was a surprise considering some of the prose. There were even times that through the slang the narrative slipped into some more elaborate language which brought my reading to an abrupt halt. Would Sid have used those words to describe something? They didn’t seem to fit with his character at all and thankfully this only occurred a couple of times, but it didn’t seem right for a prize winning novel to hold such odd inconsistencies.

I almost wish we didn’t have the ending up front which would have made the novel much more suspenseful. Their escape from Berlin would have been nail biting if I didn’t already know they made it out. It made several key scenes anti-climactic. We were even told early on who survived which left little mystery to this novel. I struggled to continue at times and the only reason I kept reading was the bit of intrigue surrounding how Sid and Hiero parted ways, which was left to the end – so maybe it was needed at the beginning after all to keep me flipping pages.

Part of the problem might have been that I didn’t like any of the characters. In fact, they grew more irritating as the novel progressed. We are introduced with a mystery and then catch up with Sid and Chip late in life. Chip has been successful, but is still an egomaniac and compulsive liar while Sid remains a bitter old man - and the story is told from his perspective. Lovely. Rewind back to Berlin and Paris during World War II where they began. And they are exactly the same. No change or evolution occurred. Add a few other characters in the past storyline – Hiero, whose quiet character was never really developed and Delilah who remains elusive and distant and they are equally not entirely likeable.

There wasn’t much emotion in this novel. Maybe that was missing for me too. It all seemed a bit slow and the only interesting thing I really liked was the introduction of Louis Armstrong which I found liked reading about as I've always loved his music.

All in all, I really don't believe this was deserving of the Giller, I've read other more powerful novels that have won the same prize and Half Blood Blues doesn't even begin to compare. (less)

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About Esi Edugyan

Esi Edugyan has a Masters in Writing from Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Best New American Voices 2003, ed. Joyce Carol Oates, and Revival: An Anthology of Black Canadian Writing (2006).

Her debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, was published internationally. It was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, was a More Book Lust se...more

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“Folks think a lifetime is a thing stretched out over years. It ain't. It can happen quick as a match in a dark room.” — 11 people liked it

“It's like that, I guess, when the past come to collect what you owe.” — 8 people liked it

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