![]() I look forward to Brown’s next work, in which she might try - with the same refreshing conviction - to answer them. Nonetheless, Assembly is a smart novel that takes risks with the questions it raises. At times, Brown struggles to balance the narrative and the criticism, favoring the still interesting but classic analysis over the more complicated and powerful story. Vignettes are packed with detail and heavy doses of cultural criticism. At only 100 pages, the book moves at an almost dizzying speed. To support the Guardian order your copy at. But Assembly’s brevity only attests to Brown’s copious talent, as she says in about a hundred pages what most writers couldn’t say in a thousand. Assembly by Natasha Brown is published by Hamish Hamilton (£12.99). Brown’s rhythmic, economic prose renders the narrator’s experiences with breathless clarity, especially the steady, gnawing stream of racial and sexual harassment she faces. Assembly is a disarmingly short book, much like Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine, which Brown cites at the end of her novel as an influence. ![]() Assembly becomes an elegiac examination of a Black woman’s life and an acerbic analysis of Britain’s racial landscape. ![]() Brown’s taut novel arrives at a time of heightened and anxious interest in stories about the realities of anti-Black racism. ![]() The narrator of this tightly conceived and distinctively written debut novel is perceptive, precise and unsparing with her words. If you've loved the recent works of Raven Leilani and Jenny Offill, this book needs to be on your TBR list. ![]()
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