Then she flung the notes bold up in the air, high and horn-like.Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan (2011) 343 p.įor some reason I feel obligated to open this review with a comment about how the Holocaust claimed far more victims than just Jews – notably blacks – but that would be pointless, because despite being about a bunch of black musicians in Nazi Germany, the book barely touches upon Nazi perseuction. When Delilah sings, Sid says, “She swing the thick, strong rope of her voice round the words, coming down hard on them, cinching them together. Music is the only thing that can lift the men out of their depression and Edugyan impressed me with her ability to write about the sound of jazz. They like to eat old France down to her crusts.” Cause I seen what the Krauts was capable of, I ain’t no fool. I wished to god I’d just go to sleep and wake up in another reality. When the Germans approach Paris, the supposedly safe haven for the musicians, Sid says, “Anxiety hung over the streets like clothes on a line… Then even the skies drained out. Edugyan knows how to write and her scenes at border crossings contain great suspense. Half-Blood Blues goes back and forth in time, from pre-war Berlin to late twentieth century Baltimore, to 1940 Paris, and forward to Berlin in 1992. The fictional characters have enormous respect for the real man, a musician whose voice, Sid says, sounds “like gravel crunching under tires.” Delilah helps them get out of Germany to Paris, and introduces them to her friend, Louis Armstrong. And both men fall in love with Delilah Brown, a Canadian jazz singer. Sid is jealous of the Kid’s talent but knows it makes his own music shine. The kid come in at a strange angle, made the notes glitter like crystal.”Īt the center of the novel is Sid’s relationship with Hiero, “the Kid”. “Then I begun to hear, like a pinprick on the air-it was that subtle-the voice of a hummingbird singing at a pitch and speed almost beyond hearing. Here’s Sid remembering the first time he heard Hiero play. The trumpet player in the band, Hieronymus Falk, is a skinny black teenager from the slums of the Rhineland. The men joke and tell stories as they wait for forged papers so they can flee to Paris. He says, “We talked like mongrels, see-half German, half Baltimore bar slang.” His language sings and swings as he describes the band hiding from the Nazis after a midnight fight with “the Boots”. Sid Griffiths, the band’s bassist, narrates Edugyan’s novel, Half-Blood Blues. The Nazis have closed down all the jazz clubs in Berlin. The six men in the Hot-time Swingers-black and white, German and American, Jewish and Gentile- can’t find any work. In 2011, the novel Half-blood Blues by Esi Edugyan won the prestigious award. Each year, one Canadian author receives the Giller Prize, Canada's premier literary award for fiction in English.
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