A Quixotic novel: The Good Lord Bird

The "adventures" continue in James McBride's The Good Lord Bird, and I put adventures in quotes because these are a series of dramatic happenings - the John Brown contingent comes upon a gunfight between slavers and Indians and leaps into the fray; Brown's sweet but unintelligent son, Fred, gets shot to death by a gang; the narrator, Onion - a young boy, liberated slave, dressed as a young girl - nearly gets captured but is rescued - yes, these are adventurous moments but there does seem to be something awry here: the narrative doesn't cohere into a whole. McBride has taken on a real challenge, in that the John Brown he has created, and very likely the John Brown of history, is/was a bit deranged, perhaps delusional, certainly obsessed, and therefore unable to focus on a clear goal and objective, so that makes the novel itself a meandering stream rather than a straight road. That can be OK in some hands - as mentioned in yesterday's post, Don Quixote may be the best example of a novel that has no clear course but is brought together by strong central characters and a wealth of dramatic and entertaining incidents (Moby-Dick may be another example); in this case, though, the incidents are not definitive and memorable in and of themselves, at least so far. What saves the novel, however, is the strong narrative voice of Onion - showing well McBride's skills with comic vernacular.