Review by Booklist Review
To be Black and to court assimilation may promise survival, but does it also involve complicity? Debut novelist Brown's nameless heroine, a third-generation Jamaican immigrant in Britain, seems to have it all: a prestigious though demanding career in finance, an upper-class white boyfriend, and all the trappings of twenty-first-century success. Yet she is surrounded by white colleagues who constantly question her competence and her right to be there, who assume she will handle low-level clerical tasks they can't be bothered with, who parade their "fresh mediocrity, assumptions, and entitlement." Tokenized both at work and in her relationship ("His presence vouches for mine, assures them that I'm the right sort of diversity. In turn, I offer him a certain liberal credibility"), she begins to wonder whether her continued existence is not acquiescence, since, "Surviving makes me a participant in their narrative." With stylistic economy, Brown etches a portrait of contemporary Britain in all its racial hypocrisy and contradictions, and of a stubbornly brilliant woman for whom death becomes the ultimate protest.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Brown's provocative and lyrical debut follows a young Black British woman's navigation of the racism and sexism at her investment banking job while she contends with a breast cancer diagnosis. Brown opens with three third-person vignettes describing an unnamed woman's sexual harassment from a man she works with, who calls her hair "wild" and her skin "exotic," then shifts to a first-person account from an unnamed woman, possibly the same one, of why she chose to work for banks. "I understood what they were. Ruthless, efficient money-machines with a byproduct of social mobility." Her "Lean In feminist" work friend thinks the narrator's white boyfriend will propose during an upcoming visit to his parents' estate, but the narrator can tell her would-be mother-in-law hopes it's a passing fling. Before the trip, she gets the results of a biopsy and tells her boyfriend there's nothing to worry about. She also reflects ominously on the doctor's admonishment on her resistance to getting surgery ("that's suicide"), and on the notion that a successful Black person can ever "transcend" race. References to bell hooks's writing on decolonization and Claudia Rankine's concept of "historical selves" bolster her fierce insights. This is a stunning achievement of compressed narrative and fearless articulation. (Sept.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young Black woman considers her options. At the center of this brilliant debut is a young Black British woman who works in finance. She works, and for as long as she can remember she has worked, in relentless pursuit of achievement, success, excellence. "I am everything they told me to become," she says. Her White boyfriend comes from a moneyed old family, and an invitation to his parents' anniversary party--a gargantuan affair--frames one end of this slim, swiftly moving novel. On the other end is a visit the narrator pays to her oncologist, where she discovers she has a decision to make. Between the oncologist and the party is an intense rumination on her choices, her life, and the pieces from which she's managed to assemble an identity, however flawed. "I have emotions," she says. "But I try to consider events as if they're happening to someone else. Some other entity." Indeed, the narrator seems painfully distant from both the people around her and the changes taking place in her life. She is constantly aware of how her appearance is utilized by others--part of her job, for instance, involves giving talks on diversity, for which her very presence is considered proof of her company's success. In just over a hundred pages, Brown tackles not only race, but class, wealth, and gender disparities, the lingering effects of colonialism, and the limits of language ("How can I use such a language to examine the society it reinforces?" the narrator wonders). This is Brown's first novel, and it has all the jagged clarity of a shard of broken glass. A piercing meditation on identity and race in contemporary Britain. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
