20 Books of Summer 2023

Every year, Cathy from 746 Books runs a 20 Books of Summer (Winter for the Southern Hemisphere) challenge and every year I participate using books from my physical, print TBR. This year it runs from 1 June until 1 September. You can see the book lists and results from all my previous attempts here.

I usually choose books from the beginning of my TBR, the oldest books on the shelf, but I’ve decided to do something a bit different this year (and I had fun with a teaser picture of the books at an angle, with some excellent suggestions on Facebook on how I’d chosen them).

The pile …

So from the top, the oldest one …

Eniola Aluko – “They Don’t Teach This” – her life in football as a Black woman

Robert Twigger – “Walking the Great North Line” – a journey through Britain

– Matthew bought me these two from The Heath Bookshop in September 2022.

Sally Xerri Brooks – “Four Movements” – short stories

– I actually know Sally but wasn’t able to attend her bookshop event, also in September, so my friend Claire bought me this signed copy.

Jess Phillips – “The Life of an MP” – how it all works, with her customary wit and spark

– Jess did an event at the bookshop in October and I bought her new book and got it signed.

Kit de Waal – “My Name is Leon” – a novel about adoption and trauma

– when I attended Kit’s talk at the bookshop in early October, I bought this one alongside her autobiography, which I have already read, not able to resist it.

Brian Bilston – “Days Like These” – his newest book of poetry (I might read this a month a week over the summer)

– His reading at a local school in November 2022, hosted by The Heath Bookshop, was hilarious and moving and I had a lovely chat with him when I got it signed.

Lenny Henry – “Who Am I, Again?” – the first volume of his autobiography

– the Bookshop had a special event where you chose a book from the table and drew a discount from a pot – I got 10% off, having predicted that, but I didn’t mind!

Yaa Gyasi – “Homegoing” – a powerful novel

James Baldwin – “Go Tell it on the Mountain” – ditto, but a classic, as I’d never read Baldwin

Charles Mongomerie – “Happy City” – urban planning

Helena Lee – “East Side Voices” – stories from British Chinese writers

Kacen Callendar – “Lark & Kasim Start a Revolution” – YA multicultural fun with a heart

Kerri Andrews – “Wanderers” – tales of women walkers and explorers

– I bought all of these in an early January book token and The Heath Bookshop token splurge at the Bookshop.

Imogen Binnie – “Nevada” – trans road trip cult classic

– This was the book group read at the Bookshop earlier in the year, I don’t do book groups but I did want to read the book.

Dean Karnazes – “A Runner’s High” – about running sustainably as you age

– The Heath Bookshop sold Dean’s books with him at the National Running show, which I didn’t attend, but I heard they’d brought some signed copies back for the shop so nipped around to pick one up.

Ian Francis – “This Way to the Revolution” – 1960s Birmingham with images of places I remember from the 80s

– I kept looking at this one on the Big Shelf of Temptation in the bookshop; I thought someone might buy me a copy for my birthday so when they didn’t, I snapped it up!

Ross Barnett – “The Missing Lynx” – introducing predators and mammals in rewilding

– I had a book token that I’d printed out and wouldn’t work in bookshops that I wanted to spend in my January splurge, so I ordered it from The Heath Bookshop’s page on bookshop.org, therefore making sure they got a cut.

Adam Nathanial Furman and Joshua Mardell – “Queer Spaces” – a guide to LGBTQIA spaces around the world

– I was away on holiday when the authors came to the Hare and Hounds to do an event hosted by the Bookshop so I made sure I snapped up a copy before I went away.

Kavita Bhanot – “The Book of Birmingham” – stories about my city by local authors

– Matthew put a couple of remaining pounds on his Christmas book token in the Bookshop towards this

Richard Mabey – “The Unofficial Countryside” – cult classic about liminal spaces

– I asked Claire and Catherine at the Bookshop to order this in for me from Little Toller (publisher and bookshop) who had tweeted their worries about their own bookshop sales, so buying it via our indie bookshop seemed a win-win.

So have you guessed the theme yet? Yes, there’s a lovely orange / green / turquoise / white colourway going on, but also these are all books I have bought from The Heath Bookshop in the just over six months they’ve been open!

Book review – Nova Reid – “The Good Ally”

Although I forgot to note the date in the book, I apparently pre-ordered it to arrive upon publication in September 2021. I did record it in my October 2021 TBR post and I am pleased to note that I have now read and reviewed everything that had come in that September. This was at the beginning of my current TBR but I’m OK with that lag – there was such an outpouring of “Black Lives Matter” reading around 2021 and I’ve purposefully kept books back to keep reading and keep sharing authors’ words on racism and allyship. This one I can remember buying because I was looking for “what I can do next” while a lot of books were setting questions and not giving answers (which is absolutely fine, of course) and also continuing my search for UK-based books on social justice and anti-racism. I’ve read a few books in the meantime (see the categories under the blog heading for more, for example this one) and it sat well with that reading for me personally.

Nova Reid – “The Good Ally: A Guided Anti-Racism Journey from Bystander to Changemaker”

(21 September 2021)

Let’s reframe privilege as advantage. Even though I experience discrimination for being a woman and racism for being Black, in my social location, I can also recognise, as a Black able-bodied woman I still have societal advantage. As a woman and then a Black woman, whilst statistically receiving less pay than white women, nearly 40 per cent less than white men in similar roles, I will statistically receive more than my Black peers who also have a disability. Accepting and acknowledging this does not take away from my own very real and painful experiences of gender discrimination, systemic racism and anti-Blackness as a dark-skinned Black woman. (pp. 21-22)

Reid is a Black British woman who took to work within social justice after setting up a wedding business for Black women and couples to address their under-representation in the wedding industry. She explains how she felt a calling to help people to model anti-racism, and TED talks and training programmes later, she’s written this book to help White people to work towards anti-racism, address our own learned racism and privilege in an institutionally racist society, and model how to be a good ally.

This book covers all the bases – and with a UK slant which is very welcome, too (there are other people doing good work here but a lot of the initial books were from the US: both countries, of course, have racism, but it exhibits in different ways and has different routes and pathways, so this is important).

Reid talks about history and policy, from the slavery era through the post-World War One race riots through government policies and examples of institutional racism. She relates this to why situations are as they are today, and makes it clear how race is a construct. She explains microaggressions and lists ones the reader might have engaged in. Then she goes on to discuss how the reader can be actively anti-racist in their personal life, in raising children, and in work and society. All of this can be found in different places in other books; this one brings it all together beautifully in one place.

There are prompts for journalling and Reid also shares powerful stories of sessions she’s run where participants have not got it, and feedback from her participants who have grown and learned, modelling what and what not to do.

One particularly fine piece of work in the book is Reid’s reframing of privilege as advantage, privilege as a word having a class-based response in the UK that is not helpful (see quote above). There is also some useful information about trauma epigenetics – that trauma is passed down through generations so that when something awful happens now, it can trigger “deep-rooted historical trauma we were not even witness to” (p. 175). I was aware there was some work going on about intergenerational trauma that’s come out in books I’ve seen others read so it was useful to see a summary of the topic presented so clearly and understandably here.

Another very useful aspect of the book is actual ‘worked examples’ of how you can reframe a child’s comment to make sure they understand race and racism in an appropriate way, or how you can push back and speak up in other ways. I appreciate the author doing the work to present this in one place, revisiting her own trauma and struggles, so readers can do the work in absorbing and noting these ways they can be actively supportive and re-route conversations among those close to them.

There is still a lot to be done, of course – a lot of people who will not read this book and actual legislation that needs to be campaigned about for change (e.g. race discrimination cases do not work in the same way as sex discrimination cases, with less time to raise them and unequal treatment if the claim is upheld). As a whole, the chapter on allyship at work is excellent, laying out exactly the process of how to create a safe space for a colleague or employee.

Uncompromising in the writing and uncomfortable to different extents in the reading (I love the opening paragraph in the second-to-last chapter where Reid points out that people who have skipped to this “Action and Advocacy” chapter they need to go back and do the work of reading and taking in the previous 340 pages) this is highly recommended, especially to those employed in organisations or involved in raising children, but to all interested readers.

Listed in the back after the extensive notes are Reid’s own resources: The Good Ally pages and Reid’s own website.

Book review – Lisa Z. Lindahl – “Unleash the Girls”

Continuing my quest to finish the older items on my NetGalley TBR, here is one that, shamefully, I downloaded in September 2021 (it’s not the one I’ve had the longest, but it is the oldest publication on there). Every now and again, when I’ve finished my reads published in the current month, I’m picking one of these up.

Lisa Z. Lindahl – “Unleash the Girls: The Untold Story of the Invention of the Sports Bra and How It Changed the World (And Me)”

(25 September 2021; NetGalley)

I just find it so fascinating, and truly ironic, that the sports bra – a true gift to girls and omen – was to a great degree born out of such a contentious relationship between two women. It was powerful fuel for my own inner search and growth.

That quotation sums up the book, really. It’s a blow-by-blow account of Lisa’s, plus colleagues Polly and Hinda’s invention and development of the sports bra in the 1970s and the subsequent ins and outs of the company they formed to take it to market in the 70s and 80s. Very much of their time, Lisa, at least, concentrates on being woman-centric and personal growth, where Hinda is more confrontational and competitive. This leads to what sounds like a horrible environment for both them and their eventual employees, with disagreements and shouting and an eventual grudging acceptance of their different ways of doing things (Polly gets bought out early on but is still a presence in Lisa’s life), which then fractures again when they sell the company.

It’s interesting on the growth of “jogging” in the US and the mechanics of setting up manufacturing and sales, but there are also a lot of musings on the nature of power and women’s personal growth. Lisa has lived with epilepsy her whole life and it’s fascinating to read her insights into how that has affected both her personal life and her business practices. We do get an update on what happened next, and it’s an interesting story to read. There are reproductions of adverts and business documentation in the middle of the book which add to it, and are now archived in the Smithsonian!

Thank you to BooksGoSocial for approving me to read this book via NetGalley and apologies for taking so long to do so. “Unleash the Girls” was published on 9 September 2019.

Book review – Deesha Philyaw – “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies”

I remember there being a lot of talk about this book when it came out in 2020 – I was interested in it at the time but thought it might be a bit rude (it’s quite rude) and I assumed it would appear for me when the time was right. Earlier this year, my friend Jenny shared some books she was passing along and here this one was, so I said yes please and it reached me in February. Weirdly for me, I’m doing pretty well with February’s incomings, having already read four out of the nine print books that came to me! I promoted this one up the pile when my old friend Melanie said she was reading it with her book group – I ended up a bit late but these two ex-librarians (who used to be Saturday library assistants) happily coped with the racy bits and both enjoyed these short stories – Melanie’s thoughts at the end.

Deesha Philyaw – “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies”

(11 February 2023, from Jenny)

I grew up watching my mother eating the crumbs and leftovers from another woman’s table. I swore I never would. But here I am grubbing, licking the edges. (p. 184)

We’re plunged straight into more than just friends best friends Eula and Caroletta with their assignations that Eula definitely thinks are just a way of passing time until a man comes along. But it’s not all sex scenes: the stories are clever and surprising, pulling out the hypocrisy of pastors who preach to gain new cars and are sleeping with their parishioners and good young ladies who take revenge on the older men who prey on their friends.

Although they are separate stories, two seem linked by a perfect peach cobbler dessert, and we range through gay and straight relationships, “Snowfall” the most affecting, showing two Southern women trying to cope with a snowy winter in a northern state which seems to be freezing their relationship; as well as the sun, they miss the more genteel racism of the South. “Instructions for Married Christian Husbands” is a narrative by a strong, independent woman who only takes so much from her married lovers and has strict rules; it’s a powerful and sharply satirical piece which takes in colourism as well as misogyny and adultery.

The language is rich, direct and powerful, with an informal tone I was familiar with from reading other fiction by Black women centring Black women’s voices. I felt like the narrators were right there, talking to me. An excellent collection and I will certainly look out for more by this author.

Melanie’s thoughts: I read it with my book club! Overall our reviews were positive and we enjoyed the stories. I liked some more than others, definitely the longer ones, which reinforces my feelings in general to short stories – I think I need more to get my teeth into. The rude bits were fine (although I felt a little taken aback jumping straight into “Eula”!), I struggled more with some of the colloquial language which I found jarring at times. My favourites were “Peach Cobbler” (which I read while waiting to donate blood – maybe not the most appropriate reading material!) and “Snowfall”, both of which I found more fully-rounded and quite poignant. I enjoyed the contrast between the lives the women were expected to lead and those they were yearning to lead, and the people they knew themselves to be. I wasn’t sure if the later story referencing peach cobbler (“Instructions for Married Christian Husbands”) was meant to be an older version of the young woman we meet earlier. Interestingly, Melanie’s US copy had this cover, while checking the UK version, it’s a pink cover with a peach in hardback, paperback and kindle versions!

Book review – Mariam Ansar – “Good for Nothing”

I won this book from NetGalley in April but it was published in March, so it joined my May TBR (still with me) and I picked it up to read first this month. A great Young Adult novel that I really enjoyed.

Mariam Ansar – “Good for Nothing”

(28 April 2023, NetGalley)

‘I’m sure he has his own story to tell, PC Phallow,’ Eman’s grandma said in thickly accented English, smiling despite her serious words and the newness of her voice.

PC Phillips’ head whipped around quickly. ‘Phillips.’ Eman’s grandma’s eyes narrowed behind her glasses.

‘Phil-ling …?’

‘Phillips.’

‘Phillips-‘

‘Yes!’

‘-es. Phillipses.’

PC Phillips’ eye began to twitch. ‘Never mind.’ She sighed, missing the exaggerated wink that Eman’s grandma gave to all of us on the sofa.

Good-girl hijabi Eman meets so-called bad boy Amir and determined athlete Kemi when the latter two are inscribing Amir’s dead brother’s name on a bus stop. Pushed together by a misguided police volunteering scheme for the summer, they all learn from each other and forge a strong friendship. Eman has the support of her grandma, seen in the quotation above getting her own back after the police officer has mangled Kemi’s Nigerian surname, and she’s a great force for good in Eman’s life and has clearly supported her mum through leaving her abusive dad; Amir is close to his little sister but not engaged with school life, always worrying about clearing his brother’s name and with a dad who ran off with a White woman and has a new family, and Kemi’s sister has gone to university and come back with a new posh voice while Kemi pushes back against the stepdad who she can’t bear to replace her late father.

Seen as living in the inferior (but also hip and cool) half of a divided town, they push back against poverty, racism and the posh folk of the other half of town in their different ways. Meanwhile, will PC Chris, who has one chapter explaining his background amidst the rotating ones of the three protagonists, learn, too?

A lovely if rather fairy-tale set piece ends this book positively: the three main characters take their own fates in their hands and have all changed by the end, and it is a lovely read.

There’s a glossary at the back, which I don’t always love as I think people should be able to look things up for themselves, however this is aimed at young adults who might not have experienced people from the communities represented here, and it’s a good mix of both the cultures.

Thank you to Penguin for selecting me to read this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “Good For Nothing” was published on 16 March 2023.

Book review – Kit de Waal – “Without Warning and Only Sometimes”

A last read from April and this was part of my effort to read hardbacks I buy new before the paperback comes out (the paperback came out on 13 April, so nearly!). I bought it at an author event at the wonderful The Heath Bookshop, our relatively new local indie bookshop, buying her novel, “My Name is Leon” at the same time and getting both signed. October 2022 was a bit of a record book-acquiring month and I can report that I have read four of the 21 print books that came to me then (still early days, though, right?!)

Kit de Waal – “Without Warning and Only Sometimes”

(13 October 2022, The Heath Bookshop)

I will die. I will die for wanting Christmas, for the slip of red ribbon from a huge box, for dreaming of the presents inside, Fry’s Chocolate Cream, things off the telly, other children’s presents. (p. 1)

The author’s memoir of growing up poor in a house with a suddenly converted Jehovah’s witness mother who works at several jobs at once to keep the household going (cleaner, hospital auxiliary) and a father who insists on buying fancy clothes and shoes for himself and sending money and goods back to the Caribbean (but cooks spectacularly for the kids and doesn’t like his old home when he returns for a visit) and a set of siblings, and notable for being set, like “The Go-Between“, in a house on a road within a couple of miles of where I sit writing this.

As others have said before, it’s both lively and bleak, heart-breaking and heart-warming. We follow Kit and her brothers and sisters through school life, through annual visits from her father’s friends when they get to see a different side of life, through the various strictures of their mother’s religion and her wavering mental health, and through their escapes as they get older. Kit falls in with the ragtag of Moseleyites, alternative livers and people on the edge of society (a feature of the suburb when I hung around there in the 90s; more sad than eccentric now, although sad then, too, and also featuring in Charlie Hill’s books), gets her independence, and finally gets introduced to the world of books, very late, discovering wodges of classics to help her chronic insomnia.

There are terrible moments, like when a hungry Kit’s posh friend Wendy sends her mum away from her (own) bedroom still clutching a tray of sandwiches she’d offered them, knowing Wendy would be kind if she said, but unable to say, but there are moments of support and joy, too, and although her mom* is difficult to be around, it’s a moving tribute to her, too.

I see her. I see her beige woolly hat pulled down low, her dark-brown coat with a high-buttoned neck and her dark-brown lace-ups with the spongy soles, the better for creeping around sleeping women and brand-new babies. I see her square hands, cold and mottled, gripping her sensible bag full of market bargains and bruised fruit, and I see her brokenness and her stories, like they are written on her face, bowing her down, overlooked by her mother, unloved by my father, and the combined five of us not enough to plug the hole those two have made. (pp. 213-214)

Of course I loved the local setting, woven through the book, with them spending time around Sarehole Mill and enjoying watching cars going through the ford and seeing if they get stuck in a flood, something we still like to do here.

An absolutely wonderful book and one that will send me to all her other work, even with its distressing themes, because I know she’ll look after the reader and not include anything gratuitous.

*Midlanders use “mom” where people from other areas of the UK use “mum” and other variants.

Post author event through the window of The Heath Bookshop with Catherine and Claire the bookshop owners and Kit de Waal with Catherine O’Flynn who interviewed her

Book review – Chelsea Kwakye and Ọrẹ Ogunbiyi – “Taking Up Space”

Having finished my April NetGalley reads, I went back in time to those earlier ones that have lingered for years: I picked off Beth Moran’s novel first but this one was the oldest one on the whole NetGalley TBR! It was worth a read and really interesting to see what the authors were saying pre the big Black Lives Matter resurgence from mid-2020 onwards and publishing frenzy of 2021. This was published by Stormzy’s #MerkyBooks imprint, which is still doing well and publishing excellent titles today.

Chelsea Kwakye and Ọrẹ Ogunbiyi – “Taking up Space: The Black Girl’s Manifesto for Change”

(27 September 2019, NetGalley)

So from the beginning, we always wanted Taking Up Space to offer that sisterhood: brutally honest whilst reassuring, almost like an older sister telling you what fashion trends to avoid because she’s been there and done that. it is now a book laced with personal anecdotes, as well as more general commentary from a wide group of black female and non-binary students on how their identity as black women and students has mediated their experiences of university – with the hope that black girls everywhere will find solace in their stories.

That quotation sums the book up. It takes us through the university experience with the two authors’ personal stories branching out into discussions of research and studies, with others’ experiences woven in. It has a lot about Cambridge, because that’s where they went – but then Oxbridge is a place of known and highlighted racial inequality and struggle that needs talking about in a nuanced way beyond the quick-win media reports. It also looks at the intersection of class and race, as well as the intersection of gender with both.

The work the authors and those they quote have done is impressive – setting up groups, campaigning, effecting change – but there’s an emphasis on self-care and not having to be an activist that is reassuring and supportive. It’s a bit dispiriting that the things the authors and their cohort talk about are still being talked about now, five years after they wrote the book: has anything really changed? Maybe the fact things are still being talked about is good, though: it hasn’t all been pushed back under the carpet.

The book has a book list and resource list at the back; obviously both could be updated now but they’re still valuable and useful.

I would definitely recommend this book to any young Black person I knew who was setting off to university (whatever gender, actually, as attitudes to young men are also covered and it’s useful for everyone to know what’s going on).

Thank you to Merky Books for choosing me to read this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review (and sorry for taking so long: not a comment on the book itself at all). “Taking up Space” was published on 27 June 2019

Book review – Ryan Love – “Arthur and Teddy are Coming Out”

Another NetGalley book and although this looks like a really sweet one and has some adorable characters, it has some hard-hitting themes, too. And that cover is just super, isn’t it!

Ryan Love – “Arthur and Teddy are Coming Out”

(17 February 2023, NetGalley)

Cora’s Cafe fell silent as Arthur entered, only the voice on the radio carrying on. The tea rooms had always been one if his and Madeleine’s favourite places to go in Northbridge. Cora Woods, who was around the same age as Elizabeth, was one of the rare outsiders who had found success there. Normally, the locals would save their custom for the businesses run by someone with connections to the town, or a surname that stirred memories of days gone by.

Arthur is 79, and for a reason we discover during the course of the book, has decided to come out as gay, with the full support of his wife, Madeleine. His daughter Elizabeth does not take this well, and even though he wasn’t always keen when she found new love after her husband passed away, Arthur doesn’t deserve the scorn she pours on him. Little does Elizabeth, a rather pushy columnist for the local paper, realise that her son, Teddy, is also gay, but very much in the closet, scared to come out especially after how she reacts to Arthur. But he does tell Arthur and they support each other.

In alternating chapters, we see Arthur (and Madeleine, who is more in the background but a rock for Arthur) reach out to embrace new chapters in their lives, Arthur meeting Oscar, a might-have-been version of him who embraced his sexuality from an early age and has led an exciting and different life, but gently encourages him rather than being pushy; and Teddy, who starts a new job and falls for a colleague his (gay) best friend Shakeel is not happy about. Lexie, his other best friend and Teddy’s two sisters complete the ensemble cast as Arthur and Teddy negotiate their first few months in this new situation and Arthur shares details of the awful treatment meted out by his father when he was younger, including forcing him into conversion therapy and having his tentative boyfriend beaten up.

Will Elizabeth come round when she sees she hasn’t lost her father and son but has gained more honesty and openness in her family? Some reviewers think she is let off lightly but there are consequences.

The part of the book I struggled with a bit was the setting. Northbridge is repeatedly described as very conservative, hidebound, mostly homophobic, but the setting is modern in terms of social media and technology, and I don’t feel any town is like that now. I believe the author is Irish and I thought for a while Northbridge was supposed to be a very religious Catholic town in Ireland (but still, the whole community? Enough that a young girl is so scared at the thought of being outed she takes a terrible step?) but then a character is described as going to Ireland, so perhaps not. “Up North” is mentioned, but is that just northern England? This was a shame as a lot of the relationships and actions seemed very authentic and rooted, but then the whole town being obsessed with hierarchies and old families gave it a ring of a fable. Maybe the author was reticent about placing it because they don’t want to look like they’re criticising their own home town or something, and people do turn around, but it gave it that edge of unreality which was a shame.

An enjoyable story with lovely characters, and I will look out for more from this author.

Thank you to HQ for approving me to read this book in return for an honest review. “Arthur and Teddy are Coming Out” was published on 13 April 2023.

Book review – Elvin James Mensah – “Small Joys”

I’ve been doing well with my April NetGalley reads with two more read and not yet reviewed (although I did win on this month which is published this month!) and we’re back to more diverse reading after my 1940 week last week. I was attracted by the blurb that announced it was about a friendship between a Black queer man and a White straight man, but also that it included a birdwatching theme and was set in my home county of Kent. Elvin James Mensah – “Small Joys” (14 Jan 2023, NetGalley)

I knew Noria’s parents very well and was often intrigued at hoe the rules of their African-ness seemed less hostile than my ad’s, even though their religion and church was just as integral to the fabric of their family. Her dad had one asked me if I had a boyfriend and I stiffened in fear, until I eventually said no, and he laughed and said that there was someone out there for me. After that, I did wonder if maybe he was cool with it because i wasn’t actually a part of their family.

Another self-assured debut novel, and again being a Gen Z novel about characters in their early 20s seemed to appeal more than the Millennial ones. Harley has dropped out of his music journalism degree course, overwhelmed by anxiety and depression, and returned to rent a room in his friend Chelsea’s flat. There he finds a new flatmate, Muddy, a rugby-playing birdwatcher who is more sensitive than he first appears, and, for good reasons as it turns out, determined to be a good friend to anyone who needs one.

Harley is initially shy of Muddy, as they first meet when Harley is contemplating some very dark thoughts indeed in the local wood; Muddy identifies someone in need of a friend and is happy to provide support and Harley learns to slowly develop a sense of self-worth as their friendship develops. Muddy’s friend Finlay, who is a bit of a prat and liable to come out with homophobic remarks, is someone who’s so dense the usually mild Harley doesn’t mind pushing back at him, and we wonder if we’ll find out why Muddy is so loyal to him. Finishing the main characters is Noria, a young Black woman Harley has been friends with for years whose family, especially her father, gives Harley an alternative view of African families and fatherhood.

Because this is all played out against the background of his Ghanaian father’s disappointment in and disapproval of what he sees as Harley’s choices. The abuse he faces from his father is horrible but all too believeable, and there are some difficult scenes which both help us to understand and place his mental health battles.

We feel through the narrative, fairly plainly written in the main though sometimes a little flowery and perhaps over-written (then again, we’re in Harley’s head and he’s planning to be a writer …) that things could turn on a moment, that Harley’s happiness out in nature or listening to Oasis in Muddy’s car is all too brittle, that the ‘relationship’ he’s clung to with a conflicted racist will destroy him. Will he manage to battle on? We are certainly rooting for him.

The Kent setting and birdwatching theme are well done, and the birdwatching allows a link with Muddy’s grandparents that gives Harley a chance to support him, too.

It’s rare to find novels about friendship (there is relationship stuff in there too, and Muddy struggles with his own identity within a relationship he’s expected to have), still rarer male friendship, still rarer the need to support and check in on people’s mental and physical health, so I have to commend Mensah for writing so honestly and engagingly on these topics. Set in 2005 to a backdrop of the Olympic Games bid win and the London bombings – which allows Mensah to discuss different reasons for anxiety but might have been an arc too many – it’s a lovely characterful novel that leaves you rooting for the characters and their future chances. I will definitely read whatever he writes next.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for selecting me to read this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “Small Joys” was published on 13 April 2023.

Book review – Jacqueline Crooks – “Fire Rush”

I requested this first novel from NetGalley and then quailed a little at the description of a section of it being around gang culture. Then I gave myself a talking-to (even though I can be quite timid in my tastes, I’ve read other strong stuff, including “Yardie” back in the day, and Timothy Mo’s “Sour Sweet”, James Kelman and Magnus Mills) and, helped by Laura Tisdall saying she was enjoying it (her review here, I didn’t read it until I’d written my review) I did pick it up and was very glad I had, instantly absorbed in the beautiful, unusual writing and atmosphere.

Jacqueline Crooks – “Fire Rush”

(19 August 2022, NetGalley)

The air is tangerine-coloured and sweet, the black sea spread out, empty. Lights and beats in the distance. Carlton follows the drums, just like Asase, Rumer and me tracked the bassline in search of raves, back in those dub-dancing times.

Yamaye, Asase and Rumer live on an estate in late-1970s West London and, two women of Jamaican heritage and one of Irish, they live for dub reggae parties, illicit nightclubs, one in a church, and house parties they go searching for. They’ve known each other forever but there are fracture lines – Asase has always taken what she wanted and that includes anything or anyone Yamaye wants or likes, and when Yamaye, our main character, meets gentle Moose, she worries Asase will annex him. But Moose knows his mind and for a while, they work on forming a solid relationship, doing ordinary couple things that are extraordinary for a woman who’s grown up with her physically abusive, scary single dad, her mum a memory and a ghost held inside her bones.

Tragedy, in the form of police brutality, intervenes, and then another act of violence, and while Yamaye grieves and tries to campaign, gathering brief allies, people start to split and return “home”, leaving her with few options. A chance encounter takes her to Bristol and an alarming gang: she holds her own, MCing at a local club, music and her mum always within her, but soon she needs to escape from there, too.

Will she find peace in Jamaica, find Moose’s beloved grandma and even her mum? Will she find the solace of her roots and the strength to escape her chaotic past? Who is that man on the beach and why does he remind her of someone who shouldn’t be there?

An incredibly lyrical patois (nothing explained, no glossary: just as easy or hard to work out as a James Kelman novel), soaked in music and dancing, whips you straight into a sweaty underground club, even though this is not music I’m that familiar with. There are also interactions with layers of history, both the archaeology of the land she lives on in London and collective-unconscious flashbacks to women’s lives as enslaved peoples (it’s also brilliant that many of the characters talk about the slave rebellions in the Caribbean, a story kept alive while it’s not taught by the colonisers).

This is such a self-assured debut, although apparently (see Laura’s review) a long time in the making, and, while the author states it’s a fictionalised account of her life, she’s made a beautiful new work out of that, and also has a full bibliography at the back – fair play to her there.

Themes of women and the patriarchy, of women carving out their own lives from the spaces they can, makes it a very attractive book, even though there’s violence and shocking scenes: it’s essentially a warm book of supportive relationships – even between Yamaye and her dad at times, and an amazing read.

Thank you to Jonathan Cape for selecting me to read this book in return for an honest review. “Fire Rush” was published on 2 March 2023.