Where Chip and Sid can walk relatively freely in Germany and France, as Americans, Hiero is liable at any moment to be taken by the Nazis, charged with a crime he did not commit, and sent to a concentration camp.
That said, when Edugyan takes the time to evoke the setting, she does a marvelous job of exploring the strange, uncertain status of black Germans and black non-Germans in the early years of the Second World War. The whole: Half Blood Blues is a book about music more than it is a book about World War II.
He thought, “ We just need a few hours, just one good goddamn take.” In the present day, he admits this to Chip and to Hiero (oh, Hiero’s alive, by the way you find that out a few chapters in), and Hiero doesn’t forgive him but he doesn’t not forgive him. In the end, we discover that Sid, desperate to make this recording that he knew was going to be something special because Hiero was something special, took delivery of Hiero’s papers (including a visa to get him into Switzerland), but hid them. The end (spoilers in this section only, so skip it if you don’t want to know!): Esi Edugyan must know my heart, because the end is the same as the beginning. In the present day (well, 1992), it tells the story of a now-old Sid, who goes to Berlin with another surviving band member, Chip, to watch a documentary about Hiero for which they provided interviews. Sid goes into the back to be sick, and while he’s back there, the Nazis come in, and Hiero doesn’t have his papers, and he’s taken away.įrom there, the book tells the story of Sid and Hiero and their band, and how they got to occupied Paris, and what happened that three of their original number were missing. He and our narrator, Sid Griffiths, go across town to get some milk at the only store that’s open at that hour. A hungover half-black trumpeter called Hiero, living in occupied Paris, has finished a discouraging recording session and he wants some milk. You just never know when you will make a choice that you think is a little dumb, a little risky, and that choice that you thought was going to be nothing (the way most of your choices are every day!) will turn out to be the whole ballgame. One of my favorite books, Sunshine, begins with the line, It was a dumb thing to do but it wasn’t that dum b, and although that is not an eloquent description of a phenomenon that worries me greatly, it is an exact description of it. The beginning: The first chapter of Half Blood Blues won me over completely. Note: Whiskey Jenny and I talked about Half-Blood Blues on our most recent podcast - go check it out if you’re a podcast listener! Mumsy is always telling me to write review posts of the books we review on the podcast, so I am giving it a try.
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