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Half Blood Blues

Esi Edugyan

3.69 · Rating details · 15,298 ratings · 1,745 reviews

The aftermath of the fall of Paris, 1940. Hieronymus Falk, a rising star on the cabaret scene, is arrested in a cafe and never heard from again. He is twenty years old. A German citizen. And he is black.

Fifty years later, Sid, Hiero's bandmate and the only witness that day, is going back to Berlin. Persuaded by his old friend Chip, Sid discovers there's more to the journey ...more

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Paperback, 343 pages

Published June 2nd 2011 by Serpent's Tail (first published April 11th 2011)

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Man Booker Prize Eligible 2011

155 books — 278 voters

Orange Prize For Fiction Longlist 2012

20 books — 155 voters

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Dec 25, 2011 karen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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

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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Feb 01, 2012 Gregory Baird rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: friendship, 2012-booklist, historical-fiction, betrayal, fiction-literature, romantic-triangle, world-war-ii, redemption

"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 "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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Oct 03, 2012 ·Karen· rated it it was ok

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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Jun 28, 2013 Megan Baxter rated it really liked it

Jazz under the Nazis, both in Germany and in occupied Paris. Friendship and betrayal in the worst of circumstances, when betrayal can literally lead to death. And then, years later, revisiting those haunts, those people, those betrayals. This is a really amazing book.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook ...more

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Nov 01, 2011 Barbara McVeigh rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, canada-reads, giller, historical-fiction, can-lit, black-writers-matter

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 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 20, 2011 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Jennifer (aka EM) by: debra

Shelves: maple-flavoured

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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Feb 05, 2014 Wanda rated it really liked it

Shelves: cbc-100-cdn-novels, canadian-eh, read-in-2014, book-club, ww2, female-authors

This is an extremely well written book—not surprising, I guess, since it was nominated for both the Man Booker and the Giller prizes. It took a period in history (the Second World War) that I care very little about and an aspect of that war that had never impinged on my consciousness (the Black experience of that war) and made me care very much indeed.

The story is told by Sidney Griffiths, a black jazz musician who is performing in Europe as the war is beginning. Sid is not a very likeable guy— This is an extremely well written book—not surprising, I guess, since it was nominated for both the Man Booker and the Giller prizes. It took a period in history (the Second World War) that I care very little about and an aspect of that war that had never impinged on my consciousness (the Black experience of that war) and made me care very much indeed.

The story is told by Sidney Griffiths, a black jazz musician who is performing in Europe as the war is beginning. Sid is not a very likeable guy—he’s extremely jealous of any one more talented than him and is always looking for an angle to push himself forward. For me, he is a perfect example of not needing to love a main character to be interested in what happens to him and his cohort of fellow musicians. Maybe one of the reasons that I continued to care about Sid was the comparison to his life-long friend, Chip, another seemingly amoral character always looking for a way to advance his interests. Most of the time, Chip drags Sid along with him, although he’s not above dumping Sid if it becomes obvious that his pal will be a hindrance. Sid seems to do the advance planning for the group and is often on the hook for coffee or lunch bills—he can’t escape his feelings of responsibility.

I think the main reason that I continued to care about Sid was his obvious humanity. I don’t know about you, but I’ve felt competitive, I’ve been jealous of someone who could do a better job that I could, I’ve found myself unwillingly plunged into “friendship” where I’ve felt used, and I’ve been spiteful. All the sins that Sid commits, I can envisage myself committing too. And by book’s end, we realize that Sid really does care about some of the shenigans that he has pulled—enough that he confesses to them and looks for forgiveness, an admirable act of bravery, and something that I question whether I would have had the fortitude to do in similar circumstances.

Ms. Edugyan makes you feel the oppression, taste the dust, tense with fear, and long to hear the jazz that these men perform. By happy accident, I heard an interview with Herbie Hancock the same day that I finished Half Blood Blues—and I am going have to check out some jazz in the near future.
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Jan 17, 2012 Jeffrey rated it did not like it

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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Nov 07, 2019 Lisa rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-tbr-shelf, audiobook

[3.4] An atmospheric novel about a jazz band set in 1992 and late 1930s Berlin and Paris. Mostly it is about the friendship and tensions between band members, African American and German, and how they deal with the encroaching Nazi threat. The novel has lots of interesting detail and riffs but it doesn't quite coalesce. I am impressed by Edugyan's writing and plan to read more of her. ...more

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Dec 22, 2011 K.D. Absolutely rated it really liked it

Recommended to K.D. by: Booker shortlist 2011

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

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 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. ...more

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Feb 04, 2012 Cynthia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-read-in-2012

In 1992 Chip Jones (a professional drummer) and Sid Griffiths (a base player as a young man) take a trip together back to Germany where they spent part of their youth during the beginning of World War II. They return as VIP's guests for the showing of a documentary based on their fellow band mate and trumpeter Hieronymus Falk's. It highlights Hiero legendary talent but it also peripherally covers their entire jazz ensemble. Chip makes some comments in the film that appall Sid, maybe because they In 1992 Chip Jones (a professional drummer) and Sid Griffiths (a base player as a young man) take a trip together back to Germany where they spent part of their youth during the beginning of World War II. They return as VIP's guests for the showing of a documentary based on their fellow band mate and trumpeter Hieronymus Falk's. It highlights Hiero legendary talent but it also peripherally covers their entire jazz ensemble. Chip makes some comments in the film that appall Sid, maybe because they are too true. Sadly Hiero, or the Kid as they called him, disappeared in 1940 and his friends fear he was sent to one of the Concentration Camps, picked up by the Nazi's because his mixed African and German heritage. Chip and Sid, both Americans though also black, managed to escape to France and then home to the US where they resumed their lives always lamenting the loss of Hiero's monumental talent. Sid has another level of guilt since he'd been at the café when Hiero was arrested.

I `m addicted to World War II lore and interested in music so I thought I'd like this book. What I wasn't ready for was how much more it was. "Half-Blood Blues" explores the nature of friendships that are formed when one is young and living in dangerous times. When Chip and Sid, as Americans were lauded almost as Gods to the German subculture who loved jazz yet they were reviled by the Nazi's they had to hide from daily. The story of the danger of those times is intense and exciting. The long slow lament of their part in losing their friend is tragic especially for Sid who almost obsesses over his role. As an old man he second guesses himself. The book also relives snippets of Chip and Sid's Baltimore childhood where they were friends, enemies and competitors and how those dynamics played out in Germany.

Edugyan explores the nature of friendship, jealousy, love and the struggle to distinguish yourself in a given field. Her characters don't have easy choices. They struggle. When Chip and Sid return to Germany they go on a journey and attempt to find peace with their pasts and current lives. This is one of those books you’ll keep thinking about long after you’ve finished it.

4.5/5
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Jan 02, 2012 Jill rated it really liked it

Shelves: african-literature

Sometimes two stories vie for attention: the story the author could have written and the one she actually did write. Such is the case with Half-Blood Blues.

If you come into this book expecting the promises of the publicist – in essence, the black German experience under the tyrannical rule of the Third Reich – you will find this book to be wanting. However, if you are looking for a book that delivers on what the author fully intends – an exploration of a one-time tight-knit jazz band with strivi Sometimes two stories vie for attention: the story the author could have written and the one she actually did write. Such is the case with Half-Blood Blues.

If you come into this book expecting the promises of the publicist – in essence, the black German experience under the tyrannical rule of the Third Reich – you will find this book to be wanting. However, if you are looking for a book that delivers on what the author fully intends – an exploration of a one-time tight-knit jazz band with striving for fame, inter-band jealousies, and betrayals – set in the late 1930s, then this book shines. It is not, perhaps, the more interesting topic, but it is the one this author tackled, and her prose positively sings and vibrates.

We know early on that Hiero – the eponymous “half blood”, half German, half black -- is arrested in a Paris café and we know that the narrator Sid feels as if he bears some responsibility. In flashbacks from a vantage point of half a century later, Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones, two African-American members of the Hot Time Swingers band, travel back again to Europe where it all began…and the path to redemption.

So what is Half Blood Blues really about? It’s an electrifying story about following a passion (“Listen, jazz, it ain’t just music. It life.”) It’s about what we ask of ourselves and what we demand of others in the name of friendship and art. It’s about the times when pretty good is not good enough.. and how we berate ourselves for our lacking. And it’s about finally being able to ask forgiveness and to forgive ourselves for our failing, because only in forgiveness can we ever really be free. In other words, it’s about life itself and how we define it for ourselves.

From the first sentence – “Chip told us not to go out. Said, don’t you boys tempt the devil”, written in a near-musical patois, to the band’s meeting with Louis Armstrong, the man all of them worshipped, the story will hold you in its thrall. Like any musical composition, there are times when the narrative slows down – perhaps more than I would have liked – and times with a note or two is out of place. Yet many of its images are searing and the ending darn near broke my heart and not in a manipulative or predictable way.

This book has been awarded the Scotibank Giller prize and was a finalist for the Man Booker prize. The accolades are well-deserved.
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Aug 08, 2011 KOMET rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction-general, zz-out-of-residence

I just finished this novel a little less than 5 minutes ago, and all I could do was hold my breath at its denouement.

The 2 main characters throughout the story are Charles C. Jones (better known as "Chip") and Sidney Griffiths ("Sid"), both African Americans, who met on the cusp of adolescence in Baltimore and later went over to Germany in the late 1920s to play jazz. Theirs was often a contentious, sparring kind of relationship that was kept strong by their common love for jazz.

The story alte ...more

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Nov 26, 2011 David Hallman rated it it was amazing · 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 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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Jul 26, 2011 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: booker-winners-and-listed, read2012, music, location-france, orange-prize, location-germany, giller-prize-winners-and-listed

It took a long time to get to this book. When it was nominated for the Booker, and then for the Giller prize, it still wasn't available for purchase in the USA. I even ranted about it in my blog.

Edugyan won the Giller prize for Half Blood Blues, and then was also included on the long list for the Orange Prize. I finally tracked a copy down, and I am so glad I did.

Half Blood Blues goes back and forth between 1939 in Berlin, 1940 in Paris, and 1992 in a handful of countries, circling around the wo ...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Hanneke rated it it was ok

The story and characters sounded interesting, so I was curious to read the book. It could have been a special story, set in such an interesting time and locations, Berlin and Paris at the very beginning of WW-II. The characters should have also been people you don't normally encounter in a novel set at that time, i.e. guys in a black jazz band. Indeed, it could have provided some serious drama, as it is a known fact that Hitler c.s. severely objected to this 'depraved' music. However, it turned ...more

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Jan 17, 2021 Emily M rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is a damn fine book. The first and last quarter were in giddy five-star territory for me, the second two quarters and the last chapter more like four stars so I’m going with that, but I really, really enjoyed it.

The story is narrated by Sid Griffiths, a Baltimore native and light-skinned black jazz musician living in Berlin just before World War II. It’s not a perspective I would ever have expected to come across in a novel, but it really put a new spin on pre-war Germany and wartime Paris. ...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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

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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Nov 10, 2011 Kaliis rated it liked it

Okay. I really REALLY wanted to give this book 4 stars...

But the ending is so rushed I thought I'd somehow gotten a copy of the book that was short a few pages, which is impressive since I read it on my kindle.

The Ending is also a little too pat for my tastes. All along she's got this fantastic unreliable narrator who openly acknowledges that he's unreliable in the best of ways: By simply saying that he's old and doesn't really care. And this works well with the course of the story...until he s ...more

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Oct 06, 2012 Jonathan rated it it was amazing

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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Mar 18, 2012 Andree rated it liked it · 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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Mar 17, 2018 Faye rated it it was ok

Shelves: reviewed, historical-fiction, man-booker-winner-or-nominated, womens-baileys-orange-prize

Read: March 2018
Rating: 2/5 stars

I liked the idea behind the story; looking at the lives of a group of black musicians in Europe in the era around World War II. The book started strongly but I quickly lost interest as the novel starting jumping backwards and forwards in time. I also found Sid and Chip incredibly unlikable and was relieved to be finished with this book by the end.

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Sep 07, 2017 Robert rated it really liked it

Half Blood Blues is an example of how a reread can change lots of things.

I read the novel back in 2011 but I did not absorb a thing. In fact I don't remember anything so I thought it should be reread.

I'm glad I did.

Half Blood Blues is a well constructed story. One that is about a jazz band who live in Berlin during the first year of the second world war and then they forced to go to Paris in order to record a song with Louis Armstrong. This does not work out and eventually the band's gifted tr ...more

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Nov 28, 2013 JenniferD rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: owned, canadian, 2015-books

beautifully written and evocative, this novel was such a pleasure to read. i loved the examination of guilt, desire and love mixed up with the escalation of WWII. why people do the things they do - well, it's never usually very clear. people are terrific at creating their own beliefs about others and, often, distortions of truth are concocted. people are complicated, their actions can perceived to be simple. esi edugyan gets all of this, and has written such a heartbreaking story of friendship, beautifully written and evocative, this novel was such a pleasure to read. i loved the examination of guilt, desire and love mixed up with the escalation of WWII. why people do the things they do - well, it's never usually very clear. people are terrific at creating their own beliefs about others and, often, distortions of truth are concocted. people are complicated, their actions can perceived to be simple. esi edugyan gets all of this, and has written such a heartbreaking story of friendship, loyalty, music, and race. my only hesitation came with the ending - after the build up of the story, it felt rushed, sudden. and then it was quickly over. the ending works - don't get me wrong. i guess i just wasn't quite ready for it to be over.

in 2014, half-blood blues was one of five novels being championed on canada reads. if you are not familiar with this, we are really lucky to have a bookish reality show here in canada. think survivor with books. five books are championed by five fairly well-known canadians, and over four days the books are debated, judged and eliminated, until only one remains. half-blood blues was championed by olympic runner donovan bailey. the theme that year was 'the one book to change canada', which was a rather lofty goal. i have always felt the downside to the show has been the elimination of one book on the very first day. yes it's live programming, and yes, it's a limited window of opportunity. it's just tough losing one book so early, without enough of a chance to help it shine. it's also really tough when the champion doesn't serve the book well, as has happened a few times over the years. unfortunately, it happened with donovan bailey. he just seemed unable to eloquently defend half-blood blues, unable to counter-debate strongly. now that i have finally taken the chance to read the novel, i feel so disappointed it didn't go further in last year's program. i feel that under a different panelist, the strengths and opportunities of edugyan's book could have reached so many more people.

sorry for the rambling tangent -- i love canada reads, and as i was so engrossed in reading half-blood blues, i felt sad that it was not better positioned last year and was imagining what could have been. ...more

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Apr 07, 2018 Randall Klein rated it it was amazing

I will go to my grave shouting about how Half Blood Blues is one of the best books of the past ten years. The publishing industry and the American reading public have a strange aversion to a lot of Canadian literary fiction, wherein a couple of larger names (Ondaatje, Munro, Atwood) break through, but everyone else gets caught in a net that prevent their sales and readership from reaching the levels down here that they do up there. Even taking this as a valid reason, it still doesn't explain why ...more

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Nov 05, 2011 Barth Siemens rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: war, canada, did-not-finish

Upon reaching the half-way mark, I've decided that I'm mostly cold about Half-Blood Blues. While there are a few good scenes, the awkward writing style is just too frustrating to wade through. Furthermore, the good parts don't seem to be tied together into a plot and there is no discernible character development. ...more

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Feb 28, 2021 chantel nouseforaname rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Wow, what a story.

So many layers. So many emotions.

First, the way that Esi Edugyan was able to capture the time, the emotions of the men during this time, the fraught-nature, anxiety and frailty of everything. It's a great feat of writing.

Edugyan is one incredibly talented writer.

Secondly, the stacking and interplay of stories in the book, from the story re: race relations, the strained love story between Sid and Delilah, all the tense friendships and jealousies. It was all skillfully put toge ...more

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Dec 09, 2018 Jonathan Pool rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american-lit

Esi Edugyan wrote Half Blood Blues seven years before her Booker shortlist (and Giller prize winner) Washington Black. I heard great things about Half Blood Blues, and actually preferred it of the two books. The time described, and the setting, is compelling- 1940; Paris and Berlin. The Nazi occupation. Esi Edugyan refers to Hitler as the “Housepainter”(77)- a clever reference to his early life career as drawer of architectural paintings.
The nature of race, and interracial discrimination is par ...more

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Aug 02, 2012 AliceinWonderland rated it liked it

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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Oct 20, 2011 Steven Langdon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: super

Esi Edugyan has created a vivid and unique world in this story of betrayal, love and jazz -- within the grimly darkening shadows of the rise of Nazi Germany before World War Two. Sid and Chip are black American jazz musicians working in pre-war Berlin, where racism had been less grim than in the U.S. before the Nazi campaign for "Aryan purity" escalated; they connect with Hiero, a young genius with a trumpet, whose father was African while his mother was a white German. All become targets for Na ...more

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Would this book be considered one about the clash of two cultures?	1	7	Mar 10, 2016 11:39AM
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About Esi Edugyan

Esi Edugyan

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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