A Book A Day In May is back! Inspired by Madame Bibi, it’s my annual attempt to finish a book a day through the month of May – though I already know the final few days won’t really be possible, but let’s start anyway.
Usually, I try to do this challenge entirely spontaneously. This year, I decided to pull lots of potential titles off my shelves and pile them up on the dining table. I think there are about 70 books there now, so I have plenty of choice and still a lot of scope for surprise, but slightly less manic pulling titles off shelves.
First up is Natasha Brown’s widely reviewed and critically lauded debut, Assembly (2021). It’s quite bold for a debut novelist to write something 100-pages-long – such a short book usually doesn’t do well, but there is also a confidence in the spare way that she has approached such a zeitgeisty topic. For, in Assembly, Brown tackles one black woman’s experience of often-subtle racism in a world where unspoken privilege is everything.
The unnamed narrator has, on the face of it, a lot of success. She is a high-flyer in finance, earning significant sums of money at a young age. Her boyfriend is clearly considering proposing, and comes from generational wealth. Her friends are confident and kind.
But… there are colleagues who intimate – or outright state – that she is only getting promotions because of her race. Her potential mother-in-law clearly considers her son to be having a temporary dalliance outside his race and class (“I was unsurprised to learn the titles and heritage properties were all on the father’s side. There was an uncertainty beneath the mother’s hostility that I almost identified with”). And – almost as an afterthought, in the novella’s priorities – she has cancer that she is curiously reluctant to treat.
Even her choice of career is not a neutral, but a response to her background:
Banks — I understood what they were. Ruthless, efficient money-machines with a byproduct of social mobility. Really, what other industry would have offered me the same chance? Unlike my boyfriend, I didn’t have the prerequisite connections or money to venture into politics. The financial industry was the only viable route upwards. I’d traded in my life for a sliver of middle-class comfort. For a future. My parents and grandparents had no such opportunities: I felt I couldn’t waste mine.
The plot of the novella, such as it is, is a trip to a party celebrating her boyfriend’s parents’ wedding anniversary. But it is really a book exploring a web of microaggressions, assumptions, glass ceilings, and the daily obstacles that a black woman encounters in a professional and social environment in the UK. Particularly when class is also thrown into the mix. Brown writes it with eloquence and elegance, and in such a spare way that nothing feels heavy-handed. Even the introduction of cancer, which could have felt like a needless, A-Little-Life-style pile-on of misery, is done with a lightness that somehow brings everything together. I found the narrator’s experience more impactful to read than a more openly furious polemic could have achieved.
What I found harder to get to grips with were the more experimental approaches. There are some formally experimental sections that didn’t add much – a couple of pages with the positive and negative associations of ‘white’ and ‘black’ respectively, which felt a bit like a high school paper – and the opening has several disjointed scenes that are quite disorienting and unclear. Perhaps that was the point, but I think it could have worked better just to tell the narrator’s story without these stray paragraphs from other scenes. I still don’t know who the people are in some of them.
Overall, I thought it was a good and engaging book, though would be more hesitant than some to announce Brown as a major new voice in fiction. But perhaps that’s because I tend to judge these things from the distance of 70 years or more. When the dust has settled, it’ll be interesting to see if this is considered a modern masterpiece, or a good book on an eternal, important topic that was dominating headlines more than usual.
Wow – a book a day in May is back! It makes me happy! Very tempted to do the same challenge along with you…
Aww yes, do join in if not too late!
Love how you do this every may I wish I could my shift pattern just doesn’t suit reading a book a day
Ah shame, yes, there are definitely days it is tricky even with a 9-5!
Thank you for reviewing this so that I could feel I knew more about what I missed; I have tried this one as I was intrigued by it when it first came out but, despite it being so short, I have to confess I DNF. Reading your review, I am a little tempted to try again but……many other books are also calling!
I like the 70 books on the dining room table idea. It sounds akin to my various bureau/mantlepiece/chair piles, which are books selected for current and future reading projects. (Yes, I already have a couple of 1949 piles as well as a list!).
Happy May (fast) reading! 😊
Glad to hear the 1949 piles are already in situ! I am slightly dreading the reshelving of all the books I read and the ones I don’t get to – pulling them off the shelves is definitely more fun.
I had a similar experience to Sarah – I was really keen to read this one, but ultimately ended up skipping to end. I can’t quite recall why it didn’t work for me – maybe it was just the wrong time. I am tempted to try again having read your review!
I didn’t love it as much as I’d hoped, but it’s definitely interesting. My book group are doing it later in the year, and I may need to re-read…
Yay, glad you’re doing this again Simon – good luck! As for today’s book, I think I would share your hesitations, and I like the fact you look at the long game, and try to gauge whether a book will be one we go back to in 70 years or so. I suspect many of the currently popular titles may well have disappeared…
Yes, I do wonder who will still be remembered from our era. And which will be unearthed as neglected gems!
I really enjoyed Assembly. I liked her next novel Universality, even more. It was a witty satire as opposed to Assembly’s bleakness.
Ah interesting, I wouldn’t be averse to trying another one day. Esp as they are short!
So interesting to read your thoughts on this one. I thought it was a very powerful articulation of the many micro-aggressions and casual prejudices that people of colour have to deal with on a daily basis. But, as you say, whether she is a major new voice in fiction is more difficult to say, especially as the reviews of Universality seem to have been more mixed…
Yes, I loved the content/idea – it was the form and structure that left me feeling slightly more lukewarm, I think.
I found this disjointed and I thought the cancer theme was a bit out of place and couldn’t understand the decision she made, while the stuff about everyday microaggressions was really strong and made a good point well.