![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Blurb On The Back:
For Selvon, Ardan and Yusuf, growing up under the towers of Stones Estate, summer means what it does anywhere: football, music, freedom. But now, after the killing of a British soldier, riots are spreading across the city, and nowhere is safe.
While the fury swirls around them, Selvon and Ardan remain focused on their own obsessions, girls and grime. Their friend Yusuf is caught up in a different tide: radicalism is sweeping his local mosque, and he’ll do anything to protect his troubled older brother, Irfan, from it.
As the voices of Nelson and Caroline echo with a previous generation’s experience of violence and extremism, the story spirals towards its devastating conclusion.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Guy Gunaratne’s stylish debut literary novel about life and race on a working class estate (long listed for the 2018 Man Booker Prize) authentically conveys the language of the people who live there and the pressures of fundamentalism and those who use it for their own ends but the story is thin and driven by coincidence, the historical sections are heavy-handed and the friendship between the three boys is superficial at best.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
For Selvon, Ardan and Yusuf, growing up under the towers of Stones Estate, summer means what it does anywhere: football, music, freedom. But now, after the killing of a British soldier, riots are spreading across the city, and nowhere is safe.
While the fury swirls around them, Selvon and Ardan remain focused on their own obsessions, girls and grime. Their friend Yusuf is caught up in a different tide: radicalism is sweeping his local mosque, and he’ll do anything to protect his troubled older brother, Irfan, from it.
As the voices of Nelson and Caroline echo with a previous generation’s experience of violence and extremism, the story spirals towards its devastating conclusion.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Guy Gunaratne’s stylish debut literary novel about life and race on a working class estate (long listed for the 2018 Man Booker Prize) authentically conveys the language of the people who live there and the pressures of fundamentalism and those who use it for their own ends but the story is thin and driven by coincidence, the historical sections are heavy-handed and the friendship between the three boys is superficial at best.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
