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Like the acclaimed film of the same title, this lyrical, lilting, densely textured novel is based on the exploits of the legendary Jamaican folk hero and reggae star Rhygin.
544 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
March 5, 2016
"The Harder They Come," the record, is one of the best records I own. "The Harder They Come," the song, is probably the best track on that record. "The Harder They Come," the film, is supposed to be great, but I haven't seen it (I have seen the fruits of its influence though... See every white person foray into reggae, from good ("Sandinista!") to bad (fucking Eric Clapton and 90's meathead ska poop). And "The Harder They Come," the novel, released almost two decades after the first depictions of Rhygin, gives us a context in which to appreciate all of that incredible achievement. No longer is the "Harder" soundtrack a merry walk down Jamaica lane... No, that album is about poverty! It's a social justice album, through and through, depicting the various ways Jamaicans overcome their squalor, some "positive" (the dance anthem "Sweet and Dandy") and some, err, less so (the proto-gangsta rap classics "Johnny Too Bad" and "Draw Your Brakes"); some showing the pull of spirituality ("Many Rivers to Cross," and "Rivers of Babylon"), others depicting the allure of the material world (the film references in "Shantytown," and "You Can Get It If You Really Want"). So yeah, a heavy record... But that doesn't mean you can't dance to it!
That's kind of how "The Harder They Come," the book, works, too. Essentially, it's a coming of age story, and a crime story: Ivanhoe Martin's journey from his rural childhood to his urban adulthood, and his gradual descent (ascent?) into criminality and reggae music (the "Rhygin" personality). It's a good damn story, mixing "Clockers" with, like, "Jane Eyre," but it's just the skeleton, really. It's the way Thelwell fleshes out these bones, with legends, myths, musical samples, rich dialogue, and a sense of all the changes working in and on Jamaica, that is truly impressive. Thelwell is a talented writer, but he is a dense writer, so navigating Ivan's tale requires a bit of patience at first. But once you've got a handle on the language of his characters, and once you start to feel the feel of Jamaica in every page, it's hard to stop reading. I did this thing in chunks. The first hundred pages probably took me a week. The next hundred took me half that. And the two hundred after that required just a couple days. The book ROCKETS toward its conclusion-- the speed of the narrative parallels the speed of its locales, from the sleepy idyllic jungle to the chaotic Kingston slums-- and ends on a perfect note.
Why didn't I hear about this one earlier? It is outstanding reading for Black History month, and would make for a ridiculously entertaining entry in a Postcolonial Literature syllabus (Thelwell's perspective on white people in Jamaica is just BRUTAL). It's also a great excuse to pull out your copy of the soundtrack and drop the PRESSHAH on YOUUU. IT IS YOUUUU
OH YEAHHHHH
That's kind of how "The Harder They Come," the book, works, too. Essentially, it's a coming of age story, and a crime story: Ivanhoe Martin's journey from his rural childhood to his urban adulthood, and his gradual descent (ascent?) into criminality and reggae music (the "Rhygin" personality). It's a good damn story, mixing "Clockers" with, like, "Jane Eyre," but it's just the skeleton, really. It's the way Thelwell fleshes out these bones, with legends, myths, musical samples, rich dialogue, and a sense of all the changes working in and on Jamaica, that is truly impressive. Thelwell is a talented writer, but he is a dense writer, so navigating Ivan's tale requires a bit of patience at first. But once you've got a handle on the language of his characters, and once you start to feel the feel of Jamaica in every page, it's hard to stop reading. I did this thing in chunks. The first hundred pages probably took me a week. The next hundred took me half that. And the two hundred after that required just a couple days. The book ROCKETS toward its conclusion-- the speed of the narrative parallels the speed of its locales, from the sleepy idyllic jungle to the chaotic Kingston slums-- and ends on a perfect note.
Why didn't I hear about this one earlier? It is outstanding reading for Black History month, and would make for a ridiculously entertaining entry in a Postcolonial Literature syllabus (Thelwell's perspective on white people in Jamaica is just BRUTAL). It's also a great excuse to pull out your copy of the soundtrack and drop the PRESSHAH on YOUUU. IT IS YOUUUU
OH YEAHHHHH
June 13, 2015
There's something about this book... It's rare that you feel an author's love for a people this much through their writing. I think it's the fact that although the narration is in pretty standard English most of the time, you get these seamless shifts into Patwa that are simply genius. It is perfectly accessible to non-Jamaicans and at the same time the 2 are sewn together so that you don't feel that there is a discrepancy or a distance between the narrator and the characters.
August 11, 2022
"You know he feels like Ivan, born under the Brixton sun,
His game is called surviving at the end of THE HARDER THEY COME
The Clash, "The Guns of Brixton"
Attention, fans! This is not a novelization of the great Jamaican film of the same name but a reimagination of the world of Jamaica's "Rude Boys", or unemployed, outlaw youths. Thelwell erases the lines between crime, rebellion and music to draw a portrait of desperation and backlash. "All the peacemakers have turned war officers, and here's what I say." The color line still looms large in Jamaica while the nation does a make-over for tourists. Slum dwellers take criminals/musicians for heroes, giving new meaning to the phrase "#1 with a bullet". Reggae, rum, rebellion and ganja; who could ask for anything more? Be sure to enjoy the Jamaican patois or "Broken Creole" reproduced in the dialogue.
His game is called surviving at the end of THE HARDER THEY COME
The Clash, "The Guns of Brixton"
Attention, fans! This is not a novelization of the great Jamaican film of the same name but a reimagination of the world of Jamaica's "Rude Boys", or unemployed, outlaw youths. Thelwell erases the lines between crime, rebellion and music to draw a portrait of desperation and backlash. "All the peacemakers have turned war officers, and here's what I say." The color line still looms large in Jamaica while the nation does a make-over for tourists. Slum dwellers take criminals/musicians for heroes, giving new meaning to the phrase "#1 with a bullet". Reggae, rum, rebellion and ganja; who could ask for anything more? Be sure to enjoy the Jamaican patois or "Broken Creole" reproduced in the dialogue.
March 6, 2014
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 17, 2022
A movie novelization praised by Chinua Achebe and Harold Bloom! Well, it makes sense. “The Harder They Come” is an awesome movie (watch it with subtitles), a classic tale of overcoming odds and dying to become a legend, and which helped introduce reggae to global audiences. Michael Thelwell is one of the original Black Studies guys, a civil rights movement veteran, and a friend/editor of Achebe. And as Thelwell points out in his introduction, he does not slavishly follow the plot of the film- among other things, the film runs at a brisk 109 minutes so it’d probably make for a short novel.
Thelwell starts us out in rural Jamaica in the mid-twentieth century. Ivanhoe Martin is a young boy who acquires the nickname “Rhygin” for his “raging” lust for life. He’s always willing to go farther than the other kids- work harder, swim further, jump off higher cliffs into deeper water. His grandmother wants him to follow in her footsteps, farming the green hillside land in a community descended from Maroon slave rebels. But you can’t keep them down on the farm once they’ve heard rocksteady, one of reggae’s progenitors. As a teenager, Ivan moved to Kingston, the big city, and encounters many classic “country bumpkin” pitfalls before starting to lead a dual life- good churchgoing boy, helping repair things around a Baptist compound by day, and “rude boy” by night, running the streets with a gang and watching endless westerns in the movie houses.
Ivan is what I’d (modestly) call “Berard-complete” – a fleshed out character (it was a real risk, too, to turn him into a kind of black Horatio Alger character, but Thelwell knew better) who also isn’t tediously psychologized. His knocks don’t all go into making him a better, stronger person. In particular, Thelwell presents the brutalities of all levels of Jamaican poverty — from wandering the streets of the rich neighborhoods begging for work only to be treated like pests, to the numerous ways the poor rip each other off just to survive, to Ivan getting ripped off by record producers after almost reaching his music stardom dreams recording the titular song — utterly unromantically. It doesn’t make you better. It just sucks.
Eventually, Ivan is hit hard enough he snaps. He cuts up a cruel overseer, gets whipped (Jamaica still used caning as a punishment at the time), and becomes a weed dealer. He gets in with some Rastafarians. The Rastas are a sort of otherworldly presence in the book. Ivan and his friends witness an attempt by Rastas to “take over” Kingston (this happened in real life). Rastas show up at odd points to show a way that black men can be true to themselves in the world. Ivan never becomes one — he loves the flash of the world too much — but they’re an important presence in the book. Eventually, the big fish Ivan works for betrays him and tries to have him killed. This allows Ivan to fully become Rhygin, as he goes on a massive crime spree that makes him a folk hero (and launches his record to the top of the charts). In the end, he’s gunned down by the cops on a beach, calling on them to “send out one man who can draw” so he can fight and die like his cowboy heroes.
It’s an interesting book, written partially in Jamaican patois (with helpful glossary). Thelwell makes good use of the contrasts of types of life- the simple rural life in the villages (which Ivan can’t return to, due to devastating changes while he’s away), life among the “sufferers” of Kingston, glimpses at the nice life lived by exploiters, the mystic experience of the Rastas. One thing I found interesting was the way in which Ivan, in the end, overcame by turning away from his humanity, in large part symbolized by women, especially his girlfriend Elsa who escaped the Baptist compound to be with him. It’s ambiguous whether Elsa betrays him to the police or not- it was either her, or the Rasta partner last seen being tortured by the cops. In any event, turning away from womanhood, with its softness and potential treachery, to finally become the “star-bwai” gunslinger… that seems to be a theme in a fair amount of lore, not unique to Jamaica but pretty common, in my experience, in Jamaican narratives, including reggae lyrics. In Rasta myth (and to a degree, practice) you don’t usually become a gunslinger star, but women very much belong in a separate, subordinate place while men take the “chalice” (weed pipe) and “reason” with each other. Remnant of colonialism, maybe, I’m no expert. Either way, an interesting book. ****’
Thelwell starts us out in rural Jamaica in the mid-twentieth century. Ivanhoe Martin is a young boy who acquires the nickname “Rhygin” for his “raging” lust for life. He’s always willing to go farther than the other kids- work harder, swim further, jump off higher cliffs into deeper water. His grandmother wants him to follow in her footsteps, farming the green hillside land in a community descended from Maroon slave rebels. But you can’t keep them down on the farm once they’ve heard rocksteady, one of reggae’s progenitors. As a teenager, Ivan moved to Kingston, the big city, and encounters many classic “country bumpkin” pitfalls before starting to lead a dual life- good churchgoing boy, helping repair things around a Baptist compound by day, and “rude boy” by night, running the streets with a gang and watching endless westerns in the movie houses.
Ivan is what I’d (modestly) call “Berard-complete” – a fleshed out character (it was a real risk, too, to turn him into a kind of black Horatio Alger character, but Thelwell knew better) who also isn’t tediously psychologized. His knocks don’t all go into making him a better, stronger person. In particular, Thelwell presents the brutalities of all levels of Jamaican poverty — from wandering the streets of the rich neighborhoods begging for work only to be treated like pests, to the numerous ways the poor rip each other off just to survive, to Ivan getting ripped off by record producers after almost reaching his music stardom dreams recording the titular song — utterly unromantically. It doesn’t make you better. It just sucks.
Eventually, Ivan is hit hard enough he snaps. He cuts up a cruel overseer, gets whipped (Jamaica still used caning as a punishment at the time), and becomes a weed dealer. He gets in with some Rastafarians. The Rastas are a sort of otherworldly presence in the book. Ivan and his friends witness an attempt by Rastas to “take over” Kingston (this happened in real life). Rastas show up at odd points to show a way that black men can be true to themselves in the world. Ivan never becomes one — he loves the flash of the world too much — but they’re an important presence in the book. Eventually, the big fish Ivan works for betrays him and tries to have him killed. This allows Ivan to fully become Rhygin, as he goes on a massive crime spree that makes him a folk hero (and launches his record to the top of the charts). In the end, he’s gunned down by the cops on a beach, calling on them to “send out one man who can draw” so he can fight and die like his cowboy heroes.
It’s an interesting book, written partially in Jamaican patois (with helpful glossary). Thelwell makes good use of the contrasts of types of life- the simple rural life in the villages (which Ivan can’t return to, due to devastating changes while he’s away), life among the “sufferers” of Kingston, glimpses at the nice life lived by exploiters, the mystic experience of the Rastas. One thing I found interesting was the way in which Ivan, in the end, overcame by turning away from his humanity, in large part symbolized by women, especially his girlfriend Elsa who escaped the Baptist compound to be with him. It’s ambiguous whether Elsa betrays him to the police or not- it was either her, or the Rasta partner last seen being tortured by the cops. In any event, turning away from womanhood, with its softness and potential treachery, to finally become the “star-bwai” gunslinger… that seems to be a theme in a fair amount of lore, not unique to Jamaica but pretty common, in my experience, in Jamaican narratives, including reggae lyrics. In Rasta myth (and to a degree, practice) you don’t usually become a gunslinger star, but women very much belong in a separate, subordinate place while men take the “chalice” (weed pipe) and “reason” with each other. Remnant of colonialism, maybe, I’m no expert. Either way, an interesting book. ****’
June 10, 2008
I began to read this novel because it shed a light on my jamaican heritage. The novel is primarily based on the film "the Harder they come". It is about the legendary Jamaican folk hero and reggae star Rhygin. It shows the corruption with the slums of kingston (which is where my mother is from) and it reveals the poverty and corruption of postcolonial Jamaica.
November 9, 2018
Reminds me of Marlon James' "A brief history of seven killings". Full of rich history, plot and characters from start to finish. I laughed so many ties while reading this book. Jamaicans really do have a way with words!
December 18, 2025
Excellent story, Ivan's relationships with his home and the community events that take place in country are very well fleshed out, the movie doesn't have time to show us these formative experiences. If you love the movie you need to read this.
May 20, 2015
After the "Tortilla Curtain", how could I resist this author on a line from Jimmy Cliff. I watched that movie over and over and loved it. The protagonist comes off as an unlikely hero on a Costa Rica tour gone bad. He is a big guy and kills a would be thug in a jungle setup.
Thelwell's attention to detail and accuracy are evident in the interchange between the "hero" and the local police. An innocent thug goes down for the crime and we are left with spit as the leaf that turns the twig on his unfortunate life. On to the Northwest and this "happy" family who has a sociopath/whatever son who has been on the road to hell since high school.
Add inept police, a wacky girl friend (of the son), and a few people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Stage right "the harder they come" in current context.
Sad outcome. Still Thelwell is real the whole time. Not as good as Tortilla Curtain, but still a good read.
Thelwell's attention to detail and accuracy are evident in the interchange between the "hero" and the local police. An innocent thug goes down for the crime and we are left with spit as the leaf that turns the twig on his unfortunate life. On to the Northwest and this "happy" family who has a sociopath/whatever son who has been on the road to hell since high school.
Add inept police, a wacky girl friend (of the son), and a few people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Stage right "the harder they come" in current context.
Sad outcome. Still Thelwell is real the whole time. Not as good as Tortilla Curtain, but still a good read.
August 31, 2007
Jamaican music in a book. This is the classic that accompanies Perry Henzel's movie of the same name. Certainly there is no better, truer picture of Jamaica in the rude bwoy era. Like the music of the time, the book follows Ivan from the hills, living with his grandmother, to Kingston and grinding poverty.
With his new name, Rhygin, comes musical success, but no financial reward. And like a western, or the Lee Perry tune it inspired, he ends in a cloud of gunsmoke.
With his new name, Rhygin, comes musical success, but no financial reward. And like a western, or the Lee Perry tune it inspired, he ends in a cloud of gunsmoke.
January 15, 2010
I have read thousands of books and this is still one of my favorites.I have read it a few times.It transends you into life in rural countryside of Jamaica. I love the way it describes the traditions of the elders and the rituals.I fell in love with the characters also.When i am lonsome for Jamaica I read this book and I feel great again!
February 3, 2009
This is a novel written after the motion picture by the same title. Much more than just a noveoizaation of the movie, this work greatly expands the film, creating a chidhood and whole culture for its main character.
September 9, 2008
Read it out loud to Kirsten over many days. Fun to attempt the thick jamacian accent. A true joy of a book.
Read
February 17, 2009ivanhoe is my guy right now.
November 19, 2009
This book may be better than the movie.
May 2, 2010
A very well done novelization of the classic movie
April 11, 2012
First half: YAY!!
Second half: NAY!!
Second half: NAY!!
May 8, 2015
One of my favorite books ever!
May 19, 2015
Boyles usual social situations with no suggestion of solution, this time guns and psychosis
January 12, 2025
deep background…
July 20, 2010
I didn't want this book to end....
April 3, 2013
I've read this a few times - absolutely one of the best novels I've ever read
March 29, 2017
Movie was good, book is better in the way a book about a movie should be, provide context and background for all of the interesting and fun things from the movie.
There are hundreds of ways to cut corners or drive the narrative off the rails novelizing an already existing screenplay, but Thelwell does the opposite, he really gets into Ivan/Rhygin's youth years, his upbringing in the country. The net impact of really building out Ivan's origin story, is a much more resonant and engaging 2nd and 3rd act in the Kingston. The author does a wonderful job showcasing personalities and identifying characters personas, and does so without stereotyping or sounding like an outsider playing at patois.
I'd give the book five stars on the linguistic aspect alone, well researched and expertly deployed, the various ways of speaking as dictated by region, class, age and religion, gives the book a clear and authoritative chorus of voices. The only reason it's not all five-star is because the History of Seven Killings still far surpasses this book, and it earned five stars...
Still really enjoyed and savored reading this book.
There are hundreds of ways to cut corners or drive the narrative off the rails novelizing an already existing screenplay, but Thelwell does the opposite, he really gets into Ivan/Rhygin's youth years, his upbringing in the country. The net impact of really building out Ivan's origin story, is a much more resonant and engaging 2nd and 3rd act in the Kingston. The author does a wonderful job showcasing personalities and identifying characters personas, and does so without stereotyping or sounding like an outsider playing at patois.
I'd give the book five stars on the linguistic aspect alone, well researched and expertly deployed, the various ways of speaking as dictated by region, class, age and religion, gives the book a clear and authoritative chorus of voices. The only reason it's not all five-star is because the History of Seven Killings still far surpasses this book, and it earned five stars...
Still really enjoyed and savored reading this book.
April 18, 2017
I usually enjoy TC Boyle, yet although I did not dislike this book, it was not my favourite, either. The same elements are there - poignant and ambiguous situations, colorfully jaunty characters, descriptions, and dialogue, raw humanity laid bare and comically exaggerated for philosophical inspection, and yet... this one did not resonate as.much as others. It may be I am jaded and/or too familiar with TC's style and intent, or that I have read more authors now and have a wider context for comparison, or maybe I am just getting older. Very much a strong like, yet still a like.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews