My expectations of Assembly by Natasha Brown were very high, after reading so many rave reviews and enthusiastic endorsements. And they were more than met, this is one of the best books, and most important, I have read this year. Even if you're not a big reader, do please add this to your reading list. It is so short, yet packs a huge punch. The Black British narrator dissects London society with searing precision. The depictions of the racial tensions and (micro)aggressions that follow her everywhere and the agression of her boyfriend's family's privilege are so precise, so stinging.

Here are two passages I bookmarked, that might convey the powerful brilliance of Natasha Brown's writing:

'There is a basic physicality to the family's wealth. The house, these ground, the staff, art - all things they can touch, inhabit, live on. And the family genealogy; all the documents, photographs. Books! A curated history. I press my palm against the rough bark of a tree trunk and look up at its branches. Cool and leafy, the air here tastes like possibility. Imagine growing up amongst this. The son, of course, insists the best things in life are free. All this was, is, free to him.'

'The answer: assimilation. Always, the pressure is there. Assimilate, assimilate... Dissolve yourself into the melting pot. And the flow out, pour into the mould. Bend your bones until they splinter and crack and you fit. Force yourself into their form. Assimilate, they say it, encouraging. Then frowning. Then again and again. And always there, quiet, beneath the urging language of tolerance and cohesion - disappear!

Now THAT'S how to write a novella. An incisive distillation of how racism seeps into every aspect of the unnamed narrator's life and thoughts despite her outward success, leaving her, as she sees it, with nothing but stark choices. Brown really demonstrates the pitfalls of "assimilation" and the dissonance caused by building your life according to the rules and expectations of others. The prose is sparse and spare, with every word hitting its mark. A little marvel.

A brilliantly brief novella with the power to spark hours of conversations. Race and class are at the forefront of this book, and the author does not shy away from uncomfortable truths. Intrinsically clever and pithy, this physically tiny debut makes a big impact.

Sparsely written and brief but this is a powerful story and I loved the narrative voice. It’s an unstinting picture of the Black experience in the elite spaces of top universities and City banks and definitely one to make you think. The reader is left to fill in a lot of the blanks for themself and the story is much richer for that. Recommended, thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

A beautifully written very short novel about a young black British women working in finance and dating an upper middle class white man. We find our heroine about to attend her boyfriend’s parents fortieth wedding anniversary party and Assembly focuses on her internal monologue. The narrative dizzyingly jumps around the issues of class and race using prose that’s both evocative and moving. Natasha Brown is one to watch - I just hope her next novel is longer as I consumed this one in about an hour!

Very short, very timely, very of the moment, very good. A young Black woman in today’s Britain seems to have made it – high-powered job in the City, money, a partner: the poster-girl for Black women’s success in a white world. But ultimately what does it all amount to? What does it really mean to be a Black woman in Britain today? She still encounters prejudice, micro-aggressions, professional jealousy, sexism, racism, privilege and entitlement. What does all her apparent success really mean for the narrator of this thought-provoking and cleverly written stream-of-consciousness novella? It’s not a cheerful conclusion, but one I found authentic and moving. Well worth a read.

This is more of an essay than a novel and the way its written, in a sort of scream of consciousness I found quite distracting and difficult to read. I do think the subject matter and the authors experiences growing up in Britain is important but I really struggled with the format and it wasn't for me.

Blazing with powerful language, wit and a truly unforgettable sense of urgency this has completely blown me away.

Is there a single word out of place? Let me know if you find one, because I can't see any.

If you haven't read this yet, do yourself a favour and pick it up - make sure you have an hour or two free depending on your reading speed and get ready to inhale greatness.

My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Please note that this review is based on an ARC of this book, and perhaps the issues I will refer to below have been fixed in the published version.

In Assembly, we follow the character of a young Black woman over a few days, including a party at her rich boyfriend's parents house in the countryside.

I was lost half of the time, not knowing what was going on. I understand what the book is supposed to be about, but I kept getting lost and not really following the plot. I was really eager to get into it, but the type of "stream of consciousness/thoughts" in which it is told didn't engage me. I felt like an idiot for not understanding.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

💎Review time 💎

Assembly by #natashabrown is a cutting and visceral demonstration of racism, sexism, prejudice, privilege and inequality.

It explores the psychological trauma experienced when living by the expectations of others.

More of an essay than a novel , I devoured it in one sitting . A thought provoking read by a clever and talented author.

Thank you to @netgalley @penguinhamishhamilton for the E-ARC .

This novel was timely and original and deserves all of the praise it is getting. Very clever and thought-provoking whilst also being fun.

This might be short, at just about 100 pages long, but it certainly packs a punch. Brown’s unnamed narrator walks us through her life in the span of a few days, building up to a party at her boyfriend’s childhood country pile of a home.

She’s rich, successful and Black, a woman in the City. She feels guilty about her wealth and resentful that she can’t fully enjoy it as a result. She’s worked hard, broken though all of the barriers in her path and she knows she deserves where she is.

She finds herself sharing a CEO promotion which she should, rightfully, have on her own. This arrangement puts her in PA place - making coffee while her partner drives the meeting. Responding to his orders to sort out his ticket as well as hers for a business trip. It’s irritating, and also familiar - most women will have experienced some of this, at one point in their lives.

With a relatively short number of pages, words are at a premium and Natasha Brown uses them wisely. Descriptions explode across the page, of her journey to work or lunch with a friend, a colleague and another woman in the office.

She wonders, in abstract thought, if she’s in the right place. Is she making the right choices? Investing in property. A relationship with a white man, where she feels like she doesn’t quite fit in with his family, like she’s a tickbox on the liberal list to go with the politician father. Is she forging the way for her younger sister?

As always with a sole voice, she is an unreliable narrator and so it;s hard to know if what she thinks is true, if her conclusions are real or influenced by her own biases and fears.

This didn’t take me long to read but it will stay with me - it’s thoughtful and thought provoking. Recommended for fans of Rachel Cusk, for Bernadine Evaristo.

Thanks to Netgalley and Hamish Hamilton.

This stream of consciousness novella about a young black woman living in London and making her way in corporate business, navigating the upper middle class snobbery of her boyfriend's circle, made for fascinating reading. Reminiscent of Claudia Rankine in style - Brown uses a very prose poetry style to convey her messages - this was about society's assumptions, fitting yourself to a mould, and the concept of 'fitting in' seen through the prisms of classism and most importantly racism. As the heroine and narrator heads to a weekend in the country with her boyfriend's family for the first time, you follow the unravelling of her personal narrative and urge her to remake her own story. Not easy reading either in style or content, but an incredibly insightful and interesting piece.

While I thought this was fantastic, I can see how people would get confused as it jumps from thought to thought pretty quickly. While this novella is short ( duh ) it packs a massive punch! Deeply moving and an insight of what it means to be Black and British.

The premise for this debut sounded promising and extremely relevant in today’s BLM world. Natasha Brown’s debut is not really a novella but more a series of vignettes (described as so in The Guardian) about a girl’s experiences of being black in Britain - all as she prepares to go to a party.

Some of the early vignettes are very brief - so much so, they often seem undeveloped and unfinished - but I guess this might be the point. Later sections are longer. The narrator is introduced to her boyfriend’s white, middle-upper class family who are preparing a lavish celebration at their country house. Is she out of her depth? Does she feel this is a privilege reserved for whites only? The workman who insults her by shouting out ‘pretty lady!’ should have known better. The point here is that he probably wouldn’t have addressed the (prospective) mother-in-law like this so what gives him the right to speak to our narrator in this way?

To me, a lot of this reads like a stream of consciousness, such is the somewhat disjointed nature of the sections. I have been left confused about the narrator’s cancer diagnosis, though, and whether it’s true, in her head or something else. The brevity of this book makes it hard, sometimes, to know what is being suggested, but I’m guessing this is the writer’s aim.

I struggled a bit with this one as I couldn't always follow what was going on. It's great that it's been published and it raises all sorts of excellent points about micro- and macroaggressions at work and elsewhere and Black people's experience of British life, especially when among high-level bankers and high-class aristocrats, but I got lost a few times. My problem, not the book's or author's.

Assembly follows our narrator, an unnamed Black British woman who attends her boyfriend's parents garden party. The narrator discusses her experiences with race and class. We see her experience microaggressions at work and from her boyfriend's family. She seems to have it all; her own flat, savings, investments, pensions and a 'very good' job in the city. Yet she is unhappy, she feels as though she hasn't accomplished much and that she hasn't made choices of her own.

This book is one of those stream of consciousness books where we are in the character's head. Thoughts jump from here to there, which can be confusing to the reader. There isn't much of a plot here. Just an exploration of our narrator's experiences. The parts I found interesting were the ones I could relate to, being a Black British woman myself. Overall the book was hard to follow (I usually find with these kind of books) but that isn't to say it wasn't well written. I just wish there was more of a plot to this book!

Thanks to NetGalley and PenguinUK/Figtree for the ARC in exchange for a honest review.

This is more of a short essay rather than a book as there’s no story line and not much is happening. The main character’s observations are current, sharp and spot on and the glimpses that we get into some other characters are masterfully drawn. I listened to the audio version and thought the narration was a little bland, although perhaps this was needed for the story.

I read this novella in one greedy sitting. It's a sharp and powerful exploration of being a Black British woman in the UK now. It unflinchingly exposes the hypocrisy, injustice and prejudice that unpins our society and the hollow emptiness of white supremacist capitalism. I left the book littered with highlights of exquisite and devasting phrases and I know it's a book I'll return to. I found the narrator's decision at the end about her health a bit overly symbolic but otherwise it's a completely sublime read that is both captivating and ferociously smart.

🌿BOOK REVIEW🌿

Assembly by Natasha Brown

“Best case: those children grow up, assimilate, get jobs and pour money. Into a government that forever tells them they are not British. This is not home.

This short story is narrated by a Black British woman who is preparing to attend a garden party at her boyfriends English estate. Simultaneously, she is reflecting on her life and the current state of the country she is meant to call home.

The power that is created in such few pages is absolutely incredible. Brown explores the hostile environment of the UK that makes her everyday life a battle. All of her achievements are put down to diversity programmes all while racism is exacerbated by Brexit.

This is an excellent novel exploring how hard Black British people have to work compared to their white counterparts, and the hostility they continue to face in the 21st century.

TW// racism, cancer, sexism