Disorientating, honest, searingly written. And yet also quite depressing! I’m looking forward to reading more from Jo Hamya.

A short novel about a woman finding a (literal) place in the world, and how to relate to others around you when you have the feeling you do not belong. It reminded me a lot of Natasha Brown's Assembly.

I think the author has something profound to say, but I struggled with the style and didn't quite get into it.

A novel that feels quite familiar, a female writer's autofictional musings on life's complexities. In this one a young woman, struggling to build a foundation for herself on an unstable academic career, the uncertainty of rented accommodation and the alienation of the millennial generation which has seen the value of the education decline while alongside their prospects of home ownership and permanent contracts. But of course, this in not a new situation for women and Hamya takes inspiration for this very contemporary narrative from Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" which highlights the necessity of financial security and independence for women to thrive.

The unnamed narrator whose inner monologue we follow. It hits very close to home for people of a similar age, the same frustrations and anxieties and disappointments of failing to establish stability as an adult. So vivid and familiar were the thoughts and feelings and overwhelming precariousness of our narrator that I can't say I enjoyed the book at all! The contemporality is enhanced by the flashes of news and from the start of Johnson's premiership burst into the narrative as the Britain tangles itself in the struggles of Brexit, emphasising again the themes of belonging, uncertainty and inequality. It's a pessimistic story, built on realism and disaffection with a dramatic conclusion like a howl built un all of that fear and frustration.

Engaging, compelling and unique in some ways, the narrator on this was clinically removed from the things happening to the protagonist. All the way through, it was compelling and kept me interested. It did get...slow (not dull exactly, but...a little monotonous) in places, but it wasn't a bad read overall.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

As a millennial, reading this book feels like being seen. We are the first generation to be predicted to be worse off than our parents in the long run, yet society still sees us as entitled and lazy. Hamya's book explores the difficulties and isolation that can be faced by the generation that graduated into a global recession, but it also talks about finding your place in a society that privileges money over enthusiasm, and the inherent difficulty in accessing a 'room of one's own' in contemporary Britain.

In 2018, a young woman rents a room at Oxford, all too aware of the privilege of the place that birthed the country's leaders. In 2019, as Britain struggles with Brexit, Grenfell, climate change and homelessness, unaware of even bigger issues emerging, a young woman temps at a magazine and pays £80 a week to sleep on a stranger's sofa. She is overworked and underpaid and a permanent job seems impossible to find. She asks herself what it's all for? I really enjoyed this as an observation on modern day Britain, the search for home and self that seems to get harder with each generation's passing.

I really wanted to like this - the writing was good and I am engaged with the themes it tackled - and it had moments where I almost did but it just didn’t hang together well enough for me.

When a novel quotes Virginia Woolf as an inspiration I am already adding it to my ‘to read’ list. I found ‘Three rooms’ a little self indulgent at times I’ll admit that but overall I really enjoyed the whole concept and structure.
Hamya constructs a story in three sections where a young woman attempts to find her place in the world through the modern struggles of life after leaving education, entry positions in the workplace and ultimately the realities and costs of true independence. The main character does perpetuate the millennial need to perfect their image and definitely has a preoccupation of worrying about what other people think about her. However the writing does tap into the insecurities we all feel in a world where everyone displays their ‘perfect’ filtered lives.
For me as a young woman the story as a whole felt quite relatable and it is definitely one of those books that you cannot help but continue to think back to after you have finished the final page.

i got 20% through this book and then decided I have a life. It has no style no narrative and vno sense to it

In theory this would be right up my alley and the plot in itself is interesting. I like the concept of rooms that made up who we have become. However, the execution was not massively successful in my opinion. The pace is off and it dragged quite a bit. There is come Cusk energy, which is not beneficial, since Cusk is on a level that most authors would never be able to reach. Good effort, for a debut, though.

Three rooms is committed to its role as part of the sub genre millennial fiction, although Hamya, much like Natasha Brown in Assembly, has created characters to critique the woes of young adulthood whilst simultaneously participating in it too, which reads like a brilliant inversion.

A disparate protagonist who keeps us at arms length as she drifts cross country from Oxford to London and back to a rural family home, she is lost and so are we. We never grasp her sense of self beyond the well trodden ideologies of the young. And maybe that is of merit, who are we when all we are consumed by are external forces telling us to stop eating avocado toast so we can get a mortgage.

The story is much of the same, a woman disenfranchised with the rental market, low waged internships parading as a foot in the door, class wars and post Brexit politics. Hamya is incisive, full of witty one liners quipping at the two blondes with a cultural affairs podcast and the viral pink and green book teaching us not all failures are bad.

It is, of the moment, and although that is tiresome to say, it rings true here. The cultural touch stones of the novel feel both timely and coated in a British specificity of millennial experience. That doesn’t feel like a negative in this case, universality is a falsehood and Hamya draws on both Blackness and Britishness to make a worthwhile contribution to this subgenre that is mostly adored by young women and despised by old men.

Exploration of the issues facing a young person in relation to accommodation, displacement and finding a place in the world upon leaving university. Would work better as an essay collection. Cleverly written.

I’ve was so intrigued by this book, unfortunately I found the writing style to be emotionless, and distant. It was tricky getting into it. It’s written in a stream-of-consciousness manner.
I couldn’t help comparing this to Luster, another debut exploring similar themes, but I much preferred Luster.

An interesting and thought provoking piece of writing, definitely very much of the moment. It has a lot to say about millennial life and all the different layers to it. That said, it never really goes much further than that. Intellectually it's good but there's no emotional or grounded substance to grab on to. Perhaps that was part of the intent but it made me struggle to enjoy the book. We're faced with this protogonist and move with her through all of these issues but I never felt like I actually got to know her on a real level.

It is unaplogetic in its point of view - it's bleak and leaves us with little hope but it does that at full tilt in a way that feels in line with the confusion of figuring out life. All in all, it's a good short book of commentary but to me it didn't feel like the right format for what it was trying to do.

This book gave an interesting insight into class complexities and how young generations navigate that. I found it overwritten at times but an enjoyable narrator through which to see the world, even if at times frustrating.

This is no country for young people they confront a radically different social landscape to that of my generation and this story highlights that even an expensive university education does not guarantee well paid employment with the opportunity to buy a house of your own. If your background is working class, you’re more likely to be mired in debt and struggling in a low paid job.
The country is in turmoil following the 2016 referendum and its aftermath and this forms the backdrop to this story, the unnamed narrators life is in turmoil as she struggles in a job where she is overworked, underpaid and has difficulty connecting with work colleagues.
She wants a job with security, a place of her own where she can live comfortably and invite friends around; instead she has an insecure job and pays rent to sleep on a sofa.
The novel puts out lots of ideas and thoughts on the present state of affairs, the struggles of this generation and the complete breakdown of society into two factions following the referendum which opened the lid and allowed racism and intolerance to seep out.
A beautifully observed book that covers a number of important themes and captures the despair of young people.

I really enjoyed this short novel about what it means to be Black in certain spaces (in this respect I thought it had a lot in common with another recent NetGalley read, Assembly) but also the precariousness of jobs and home for young people today. I have a strong familiarity with one of the milieux described here and it’s done in incredibly precise detail but I think it would be perfectly accessible to someone who didn’t. It wears its references lightly but it adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Highly recommended, thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Hamya's incisive debut dissects the paradoxical state of living as a young professional in our modern society.
Between commentary on contemporary sociopolitical issues, the central discussion always returns to the increasing impossibility of ever possessing a room of one's own.

We first meet our unnamed protagonist as she moves into her accommodation in advance of starting a research assistant position at Oxford University. While there, she struggles with the idea of home being a temporary, borrowed thing, a symbol of someone else's success. When her contract finishes, she moves on to an internship at an elite society magazine in London. With the position barely paying enough to cover meals, she ends up staying on an acquaintance's sofa and so, once again, she struggles to find fulfilment as she's driven to exist in space which does not and could never belong to her.

The prose is framed by, and absolutely littered with, literary and scholarly references (most of which probably went straight over my head, so sorry Virginia). There are phrases and passages in this novel that are so stunning, so painfully accurate and relatable, that you have to rerereread them. Unfortunately though, I couldn't forgive the narrative its exhausting narrator.

'Don't you think it's weird that you spent a year giving yourself to the place that started the careers of people that openly disdain you, and now you've gone to work for a publication that exalts them?'

YES. I do. I find it bizarre, hypocritical even, that a novel discussing privilege and the ever more desperate distance between social classes should choose to express itself through a self-described 'bourgeois' narrator streaming largely inaccessible intellectualism. While I'm completely in awe of Hamya's clear intelligence and astute social perception, in places the narrative borders on an undermining, off-putting pretentiousness that I struggled to take seriously. Even if this is a conscious (satirical?) construction, it's still so arduous to read. I suppose, as someone who wasted years believing that academia and professionalism were closed doors to me, I just don't have much patience for the apathetic upper-echelons who fail to recognise their privilege.

An interesting insight on contemporary life for an ambitious young women trying to get breaks on the career ladder. Set in both Oxford then London we learn of the tough times through a young women trying to belong. It is tough and direct set against a backdrop of post Brexit referendum. Compromising on housing and jobs to make ends meet despite being highly educated, highlights the dichotomy prevalent today in supposedly affluent first world cities such as London. Difficult to get inside the emotional aspects of the narrator so felt distant reading this.

Three Rooms is about a young woman trying to find her place in an the current ever changing world. The story is told in the first person and the dissapointment she feels in being unable to see a way of achieving her dreams ( a home of her own, a well paid job) will resonate with many people. The tone of the book is a little depressing, and although you may feel the same way as the narrator you struggle to like her, she comes across as awkward and self focused with no care for the people around her. It's a lesson that life is what you make it and it doesn't feel like she is trying very hard!!

I was given a copy of Three Rooms by NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review.