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The Bricks that Built the Houses
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Description
The highly anticipated debut novel from Kae Tempest--acclaimed poet, playwright, rapper, and recording artist--proves their talent to be boundless and unstoppable.
Becky, Harry, and Leon are leaving London in a fourth-hand Ford with a suitcase full of stolen money, in a mess of tangled loyalties and impulses. But can they truly leave the city that's in their bones?
Kae Tempest's novel reaches back through time--through tensely quiet dining rooms and crassly loud clubs--to the first time Becky and Harry meet. It sprawls through their lives and those they touch--of their families and friends and faces on the street--revealing intimacies and the moments that make them. And it captures the contemporary struggle of urban life, of young people seeking jobs or juggling jobs, harboring ambitions and making compromises.
The Bricks that Built the Houses is an unexpected love story. It's about being young, but being part of something old. It's about how we become ourselves, and how we effect our futures. Rich in character and restless in perspective, driven by ethics and empathy, it asks--and seeks to answer--how best to live with and love one another.
Kae Tempest, a major talent in the poetry and music worlds, sits poised to become a major novelist as well.
Product details
Published | May 03 2016 |
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Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 416 |
ISBN | 9781620409022 |
Imprint | Bloomsbury USA |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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[The Bricks that Built the Houses] marks the arrival of a significant new voice . . . deeply affecting: cinematic in scope; touching in its emphatic humanity . . . Tempest's voice--by turns raging and tender--never falters. By the time the novel reaches its cleareyed climax, cleverly undercutting its own promised happy ending, the reader is left with the impression of a work that hums with human life.
New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
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A novel that perfectly captures the modern trials and tribulations of youth and urban life in London.
BuzzFeed
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Tempest has a knack for the devastating throwaway line--a skill-honed, no doubt, from years of rapping and spoken-word performances. [Their] work is rich with underlinable lines . . . Captivating.
New Yorker
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[Tempest is] a Zadie Smith if Smith were in her 20s again . . . An artistic prodigy . . . [Their] captivating The Bricks That Built the Houses is rich in detail, clever in plot and filled with characters who live on the edge but never quite give up.
Shelf Awareness
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With a scope that rivals Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, Tempest juggles themes of family, history, and womanhood.
Booklist
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This is a bold, bright, beguiling novel; a lustrous pageant that dazzles and grips . . . [Tempest] may well be unstoppable.
Sunday Telegraph