Tournament of Books Final Round: THE GOOD LORD BIRD by James McBride vs. LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson

Unsurprisingly, THE GOOD LORD BIRD takes home the Rooster. I was a little disappointed in the Tournament this year—not just because I think the least offensive, most broadly appealing book won, but also because I didn’t feel that I read many new ways of looking at the books that were reviewed. There are kind of two camps of book reviews, one that presupposes you’ve read the book and one that doesn’t. I usually prefer the former; I turn to reviews when I’ve just read a book, to see if there’s a new interpretation of the text that I haven’t considered. I rarely look to reviews for recommendations; a recommendation can be a list or a couple sentences and suffice for me to pick up the book.

Both THE GOOD LORD BIRD and LIFE AFTER LIFE are historical novels; a friend of mine doesn’t like reading historical fiction because she “doesn’t know if what [she’s] learning is true.” I’m interested in that point of view; it’s true of pretty much anything we read from far enough in the past (did George Washington really chop down that cherry tree? I argue there is literally no way to be sure) but it also points out the limits of historical fiction. At some point, if you’re curious enough about the events depicted, you’ll head to nonfictional source material to learn more. This is more important in THE GOOD LORD BIRD than LIFE AFTER LIFE, particularly if you’re not familiar with the characters McBride lampoons. (I am assuming that almost any reader knows that someone like Ursula didn’t shoot Hitler in a tavern, and that Eva Braun didn’t have many female friends). In that sense, I suppose THE GOOD LORD BIRD is more successful; it’s more likely to push readers to learn more, if only because the characterizations of historical figures are so funny and odd. I am interested in whether John Brown’s sons were basically as depicted, and whether any of the reinforcements on the train who were scared off by the lack of a password realized later what they had missed, and how they felt about missing it.

I’m strangely not curious at all to read anything else by McBride, though, and that’s why I still think that THE SON won this tournament. I can’t wait to get my hands on AMERICAN RUST, and I want to re-read THE SON very soon.

Read the final ToB judgments here.