This is a great story of Yamaye and her journey of discovery. It tells, in Jamaican patois, a story of love, loss and slavery, all interconnected with the rhythms and language of dub-step. It grounds itself in the fever of racial tension of 80s/90s Britain, and shared a story against a backdrop of riots and the oppressive Babylon.

If I had to describe this book in one word it would be: fierce.

1970’s London is a fierce place, with a sense of violence around every corner. Protagonist Yamaye has to be fierce to cope with the grief that she has suffered from childhood and her increasing isolation, and even fiercer if she is to survive the group of friends who have offered her an escape from her normal life.

The closest in writing style that I have experienced to this, in terms of language used and the unrelentingness of the story, is Booker Prize winner Marlon James. It’s very well written but not always a pleasure to read. I felt that it offered some insight for why a person can end up with friends that are damaging to them.

It didn’t feel like a historical piece but felt like it could have easily have been set in the 2010s. At the end it said that the book is a fictionalised version of the author’s own life experiences, which has made me wonder how close the fiction is to the fact.

Gripping and at times uncomfortable, this book is unlike anything else I’ve ever read! Jacqueline Crook’s debut novel is one you cannot miss. Set in the 80s, we follow a young woman (Yamaye) whose life seemingly revolves around partying at the crypt, her two best friends and Moose, the man who she quickly falls for. Life seems to be good until it’s not. With her whole world crumbling she goes on a journey to find out who she is without those she loved most around her.

Yamaye really connected with me, the author did a brilliant job of making you care for her which only makes you feel her pain and anguish so acutely and you will want to see how her story unfolds. Additionally, the development of the side characters was done exquisitely.


Some elements of this book that I absolutely loved were the use of patois, which made the story that much more real, and how music is woven all throughout the book, adding an extra layer of emotion.

I would highly recommend this book, however, it does cover some very serious and heavy themes so proceed with caution!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review

This book is completely out of my comfort zone which is why I chose it initially. I was drawn to the cover and the description sounded intriguing.
The dialect took a little getting used to and at first I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to follow it. But I grew to enjoy the poetry of it and it took my full attention away somewhere completely different. The writer really takes you into the heart of the action.
It’s not always an easy read, the subject matter is both hard and vital. But it’s a really rewarding book and I would read this author again.

This big buzz debut was one of the titles I featured as one of my potential highlights of the year. Jacqueline Crooks has published short stories but this semi-autobiographical work is her first full-length novel. It is also my first five star read of 2023.
This is a confident, lyrical, powerful work. The author handles tonal change very well and is able, through an involving narrative, to sustain the pull of heritage, underwater imagery and the rhythms of the often undulating, often sparse dub instrumental versions of reggae music throughout a novel rich in plot and characterisation.
We start in 1978 in Norwood, a London suburb, with three girls, Yamaye, the narrator, Asase, prickly and sassy and Rumer, a white girl from the Irish travelling community who escape underground to dances in a church crypt, “a three-pin plug, charging ourselves to dub riddim, connecting through each other to the underground” whilst tensions with police, the use of stop and search laws and the men who hit on them on the dancefloor weave a potent web.
A second section features Yamaye removed from her community, falling into a difficult lifestyle with restricted choices within a squat finding her expression in toasting over the rhythm tracks in a Bristol nightclub. Circumstances force her to Jamaica in a third part to search for her heritage and regain meaning to her life. Each section feels different and yet there is a flowing overlap which feels like it could stifle the main character at any moment as she struggles to keep her head above water. This phrase is apt as there is so much water within the images of this book from the calling from the Caribbean over the oceans, the lingering ghosts of slave ships and release from the enchainment of the seas all having a part to play.
There’s a great cast of characters, vividly drawn. The language is rich and rooted in a Black British Caribbean which feels poetic and powerful and often mystical and elusive, acknowledging a sisterhood of many previous generations, occasionally keeping meaning at arm’s length but then pulling in for a warming hug.
I really enjoyed this- from the fyah of the fierce girls dancing in the damp, smokey club to the fire of the title, the spiritual energy from a much simpler Jamaican life, there is much growth and development which kept me involved throughout. It is a very strong debut and Jacqueline Crooks deserves to make a significant impact with this.

Fire Rush will be published by Vintage/ Jonathan Cape in the UK on 2nd March 2023. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Dancehall, dubplates, and duppy. A tale about motherless children, and childless mothers A story about how we need to listen to the voices of our ancestors in order to move forward. A book about walking in the footsteps of our foremothers, listening to the sounds they heard, and seeing the sights they saw. A tale about growing strong in order to be soft...Read it!

Music beats through this confident and assured debut novel, as does the Jamaican patois which makes the characters come alive on the page. Fire Rush covers big themes and issues regarding race and police brutality, alongside smaller, personal themes of friendship and loss.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

3.5 rounded up.
This was a difficult but powerful read. It took a while to get into with its writing style, and it was rather intense with some of the dark themes. I enjoyed the second half much more than the first.

Wow. This novel picks you up and *takes you with it*, through different Black scenes and lives - a parallel world to many White people of the period, in music and language and food, the lot. Crooks swings between different writing styles, from languid nights out to love to loss to terror, and right through to the end. Read it. It's not always an easy read, but it's well worth doing.

I really wanted to love this book the synopsis sold it to me but I struggled to get in to it first because of the dialect and then I was so focused on trying to understand what was being said that I completely didn’t no what I was reading 1 star from me sorry.

This is an incredible debut novel. I would consider it a must read! Crooks does a fantastic job of capturing the turbulent, chaotic and stressful history of Black women's lives in the 70s and 80s.

I did not know that much about the history of the Caribbeann community in London before reading this book and it was eye opening. This book was so enlightening and incredibly moving. I will be recommending it to all of my friends

I struggled to get into this book as I found the speech really difficult to follow, which is a shame as it felt like the author had a lot to say.
Maybe if there is an audio version I will try that as hearing the words and rhythm would probably help.
Thank you to netgalley and vintage books for an advance copy of this book.

Not for me, I couldn’t get into the book because of the dialect.
I’m sure it’s a great read if you could get past that

This is a great Debut form Jacqueline Crooks. I have been looking forward to reading this. We meet Yameye who lives with her Dad after her Mum had died. I really loved all the references to music and dancing and the Dub scene in the 80's. When Moose her boyfriend gets killed by police she joins up with a justice group and runs away to Bristol with Monassa who she finds herself in too deeply again.
She also returns to her roots in Jamaica and visits Cockpit county which is steeped in history. I found the book so thorough and knowledgeable. I loved all the rain forest and nature references - so descriptive.
I will be recommending this book to others.

Some novels take a while to get going, but not Fire Rush. Jacqueline Crooks takes us straight to the streets of 1970s London and introduces us to the group of friends who will be at the centre of the action, both on this night and in what follows:

"Tombstone Estate gyals — Caribbean, Irish. No one expects better. We ain’t IT. But we sure ain’t shit. All we need is a likkle bit of riddim. So we go inna it, deep, into the dance-hall Crypt."

As well as introducing us to three central characters, this short paragraph also introduces us to two important themes of Fire Rush: music and death. The Crypt embodies them both—it’s an underground world of pulsing reggae and dub, skanking and swaying, excitement and strong hints of danger. But it’s also an old crypt, a place of burials and ancient remains. It’s also a “refuge from Babylon”, but one man has used it as a hiding-place from the police for so long that he seems to be buried alive.

Then there’s the Tombstone Estate, the public housing complex where Yamaye, Asase and Rumer live in massive tombstone-shaped white buildings with “metal coffin lifts”, skull and crossbones graffiti on the walls, and flats that “look out over the cemetery and the surrounding wastelands”.

For a while, it seems as if Yamaye will escape from the intimations of death all around her. She meets a good man, Moose, and they begin a life together that, it seems, will be better. But then Moose dies at the hands of the police, like so many other young Black men: arrested for obscure reasons and then suddenly dying in police custody. The official story—he fought and needed to be “restrained”—makes no sense.

Things fall apart. Asase is jailed, Rumer goes back to Ireland, Yamaye drifts, trying to fight for justice but unable to believe that justice is possible in that place. She falls into another kind of death, meeting a man called Monassa in a cemetery at night and ending up hiding out in his safe house in Bristol, a place that is gradually transformed from a refuge to a cage as Monassa’s behaviour becomes more menacing and controlling.

And through it all, the music plays. For Yamaye, music and dance seem to act as more than just an escape from a difficult life, and certainly much more than fun. They are her way of exploring the world and discovering herself. Music plays such a central role in Fire Rush that, unusually, the novel comes with a playlist to listen to as you read.

It’s also no coincidence, I think, that the music Yamaye listens to has its origins in the Caribbean, and that Caribbean music is itself strongly influenced by the music of Africa. In the beats of the music, Yamaye finds a way to connect with her ancestors and discover sources of strength to help her survive in a hostile world of racism, police brutality, male violence and a host of other problems.

Towards the end of the book, Yamaye’s physical journey mirrors her musical one. She goes to Jamaica, both to escape from the scarily possessive and violent Monassa and to search for traces of her mother, who disappeared years earlier. But the more profound revelations of that journey come when she meets Granny Itiba, Moose’s grandmother, and discovers links to centuries-old sources of resistance and power. Through them, she finds the strength to confront the man who’s been pursuing her and also, we sense, to face the other problems in her life without needing to hide any more.

Fire Rush presents us with a bleak, violent, unfair world, and yet it’s not a depressing read. Although Yamaye and her friends face horrific events and have limited options, they are not helpless victims of fate—far from it. They dance, they fight, they struggle, they resist. They are strong characters who you instinctively root for, and although there’s plenty of pain in store for them, there’s also plenty of beauty and discovery and growth.

Yamaye and her gyals: Rumer and Asase are all dressed up for a night’s dancing in the Crypt at a local church in SE London. It’s an all nighter with 200 people packed inside, sweaty and with ‘sensamilla smoke and supra-watt riddims’ as well close, sometimes too close dancing with Rumer as the only white girl there.
It’s the end of the 1970’s and the beginning of the 1980’s. As Yamaye observes, Mrs Thatcher ‘is the National Front in a pussy cat bow.’ Sus laws, far right groups on the march, and the realities of life on a tower block housing estate known as Tombstone.
The gyals all have day jobs but they live for their nights at the Crypt. Yamaye has dreams of being a DJ one day but not yet. She lives with her poopa, Irving, who is beginning to slide into dementia, while her muma is rumoured to be in Guyana. Rumer ran away from the arranged marriage that her Irish travelling family wanted for her and Asase is beautiful but volatile. They meet men at the Crypt such as Lego, Crab Man, and Eustace. And Yamaye meets Moose, a man from Essex, who has his own business. And life changes for Yamaye as she falls in love and begins to have plans for a future.
Until Moose dies in police custody, a victim of the sus laws and the resultant campaign to get justice for him takes over her life. And then while she is still reeling from that cruel loss, her gyals, her support team go their own ways. Asase into prison for 5 years and Rumer back to what she wanted to escape from. The sisters and Yamaye, in the throes of grief for Moose and her lost sisters meets Monassa who leads her into gang life from which he will never let her escape. But she won’t give up on her dream of going to Jamaica to find her muma.
I really loved this book and what a killer cover! It had me at the Spotify playlist with Misty in Roots amongst others. It’s told in the first person in Jamaican patois and the author has said that it’s a fictionalised account of her own life. It had that authenticity, rawness and immediacy about it. I really felt that I was dancing with the gyals in the Crypt. The rituals of getting dressed up for a night out dancing at the Crypt: the shoes, the clothes, the make-up, planning dance moves and the overall focus, these really brought the gyals to life. I liked Yamaye and the book was revealing about the life of black women during the 1970’ and 1980’s. I thought she was a plucky, determined character who deserved better. The impression that I had of Yamaye was that she was searching for friends, family, her muma and another life that she really wanted..
But Death featured a lot in this book. The Crypt where Yamaye feels that they are ‘skinning up with the dead’, she meets Monessa when she cuts through a graveyard and there are several references to ‘duppies’ which is the Jamaican word for ghost or spirits. She lives on a housing estate known as Tombstone and towards the end the book became very mystical as Yamaye attempts to summon up the dead.

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.

Jacqueline Crooks' Fire Rush is a brilliant debut, an important novel about identity and power which has the makings of a modern classic.

Our protagonist is Yamaye, a young woman raised by a Jamaican immigrant father in a South London suburb, who comes of age in the late 1970s, a time where being Black in Britain was hard, and being a Black woman was harder. The story follows her from the council estate where she grew up to the Bristol underworld, and finally to the Caribbean island of her parents' birth, as she searches for peace, connection and purpose.

Crooks' prose reads like poetry - every word and phrase carefully, deliberately evocative - and through her descriptions she deftly creates distinct impressions of each place: the people, the buildings, the atmosphere, the clothes, the music. A thread of magical realism also weaves through the narrative, drawing the reader inside Yamaye's mind and back through 400 years of Black history. Music connects the disparate locations and parts of the narrative, with Yamaye's lyrics and references to the dub music of the era linking the damp underground crypt where Yamaye parties with her friends in London to the forests and caves of Jamaica.

I've read other novels set in a similar time and place, such as Alex Wheatle's East of Acre Lane, and seen documentaries about the climate of racism and opression by Black Britons at the hands of the police - notably Steve McQueen's Uprising. However, Crooks' novel provides a fresh, much-needed female perspective, highlighting the unique struggles of Black women, who often bore the brunt of the feelings of frustration and emasculation which arose in their husbands due to the way they were treated and viewed by society. Crooks writes how one male character 'was always wanting his likkle piece of power under his roof because he couldn't get respect out in the big wide world. Because he's a Black man.' She sums up the world of women like Yamaye as follows: 'Nowhere's safe: not the streets, governed by police with barbed-wire veins; not our homes, ruled by men with power fists as misshapen as their wounds. The only place to live and rage from is our hearts.' In contrast, the figure of Nanny of the Maroons, an indomitable female leader who led an uprising against the British in Jamaica, is alluded to throughout the narrative, and I loved seeing how Yamaye came to identify with her more and more as she learned more about herself and what she was capable of.

Fire Rush is very much a story about power - who has it, over whom and how they use it. When we first meet Yamaye, she seems happy, but as we get to know her we realise how trapped she is by the struggle to understand who she is and where she comes from, by society's view of her and by the relationships that have come to define her. Every relationship in the story is beautifully complicated and real: with her distant, abusive father, Irving; with her domineering best friend, Asase, whom she loves but with whom she can never truly be herself; with Moose and with Monassa. It's also a story of how female friendship can strengthen you and limit you, and at its core, it's a beautiful, heartbreaking love story.

Stop what you're doing and get this 𝗜𝗡𝗖𝗥𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗕𝗟𝗘 debut added to your TBR immediately! Come March, this book will literally be pulsing and singing its way from the bookshelves! Such an incredibly raw, powerful, and beautiful read. Packed full of sadness and hope, captivity, and freedom with such an endearing and loveable protagonist. Honestly, I can't recommend this enough ❤️‍🔥

Very much enjoyed this book once I put my head in to the Jamaican jargon. I read a lot through hearing in my mind the language and terminology. It would be a great audible book. The way of speech added so much to the feel of authenticity.
One of the things I loved about the book was a feeling I was actually with the characters, living their lives and feeling their Reggae Jamaican music.
However, this was a tragic read with lives broken and worlds continuously turned upside down. Yamaye seemed to have more than her fair share of troubles and sadness. She is desperate to be loved and included and endlessly fell under the spell of controlling people.
She lives a tormented life and the safe house is not safe at all. This book has it all with great character descriptions and the feel of London clubs in the late 70’s. It is definitely not for the feint hearted and is full of sadness and pain.
I was left in deep thought long after I finished reading.

This book was featured in the 2023 version of the influential annual Observer Best Debut Novelist feature (past years have included Natasha Brown, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Douglas Stuart, Sally Rooney, Rebecca Watson, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, JR Thorp Bonnie Garmus, Gail Honeyman among many others).

Having read much of this year’s strong list already I would say that it has the most vibrant and distinctive voice, while not my personal favourite reading experience.

It has taken the author – whose previous book, a collection of short stories, was Orwell Prize longlisted with one of the stories BBC Short Story prize shortlisted – some sixteen years to write this book which was at the same time strongly autobiographical and subject to detailed research.

The book starts in Norwood “one of those small industrial towns on the western edge of London, Part village, parts suburb, an overgrowth of the City” (and I think a home for Southall where the author grew up – which I have to say left me, literally disorientated at the start of the novel as I read much of it travelling between my home and London and passing through the real-life South Norwood (and in particular Norwood junction) which is to the South of London. And if I had any reservation about this novel it was that the sense of disorientation never quite left me – although I would stress that is much more due to my tastes than any fault of the author’s.

The book has two key distinguishing features: a detailed use of Patois and (even more distinctively) the way in which the rhythm of music (and in particular the music of the late 1970s/early1980s underground dub scene) is incorporated into the novel.

The Patois (which interestingly the author dialled up during writing after her original agent dropped her after she did not agree to tone it down) really adds to the authenticity of the novel and I think is quickly absorbed by any reader.

The music/rhythm parts have two elements.

Much of the book is set in underground clubs, or to accompaniment of mix tapes or in some other way listening and/or dancing to music and the author spends a lot of time describing the way the characters experience this. Some examples:

"Bodies rippling like seagrass. Synthesising air and bass.

Inna cave of sound, we skank low, spirits high, Deep moves as offerings to the soundboxes, wooden dieties full of fading voices.

I’m dragged under reverberations, the spinning wheels of time. Dancers wave their arms, air horns blow, a ship lost at sea. Go deh, the massive shout. Electrified jerks of their heads. Clockwork arms. They come alive on the dance floor. Pull-back motion of spines. Juddering-stalking-rotating. All the stored-up, winding energy of the old times."

This was the part that did not quite work for me – I have to say I am not particularly interested in music and much less so in dancing and I simple could not absorb these sections.

But what did really work for me is how the author, via her first party narrator Yamaye, mixes musical metaphors into her every day experiences, some examples ……..

"I step-bounce-swing in the crisp cold November day, bare beech trees swaying like dancers in the shrouded vocals of the wind.

High E strings in my stomach, pulling on my guts, but I can’t seem to dredge the siren sound to my throat. Have I mixed things up? The notes in my belly twang so I try a haul-and-pull, lifting the needle off memory, dragging it back to the first bar again and again. Feel the foreboding and dread of truth. "

If anything, I think the musical part may be even more embedded – certainly a few years ago when working on the novel the author said “Each chapter of Fire Rush will be written for performance as well as the page. That is the challenge I’ve set myself. A specific dub track will drive the writing of each chapter and will be the track that will accompany readings.” I am less clear if this happened. Penguin list a playlist for the book but it is written for crucial scenes rather than chapter by chapter

It does however serves as an excellent summary of the plot of a novel which:

Moves from Norwood to Bristol to Jamaica

Which thematically covers: black women and their rage, the underground dub scene – including the dark side of its misogyny; London police violence and oppression particularly against black people and women (shockingly as topical today as it was more than 40 years ago when the novel is set) – including the sus laws, deaths in custody and the use of informants and harassment; gang activity; the various legacies of slavery – an area covered particularly strongly in Bristol (where of course it as equally recently topical given the Edward Colston statue); the Jamaican maroons and their struggle against colonial slavery; ghosts and obeah rituals; archaelogical investigation of slave ships and its interaction with activist art – and much more besides

But is at heart a story of someone looking for their identity, for love and a place of safety and belonging – an old story told in a very new way.

“Ghetto of the City” by Misty in Roots – Opening scene, referencing the subterranean world
“Sing Me a Love Song” by Carroll Thompson – Yamaye communing with Muma
“Bad Boy Rhythm Dub” by King Tubby – Dancing with Crab Man
“London Town” by Light of the World – Asase, Rumer, Yamaye, Moose, driving through London looking for a rave
“Love Has Found Its Way” by Dennis Brown – Yamaye and Moose falling in love
“Lady of Magic, Bunny Maloney” by Moose gives Yamaye the ring and mix tapes
“Babylon, Sugar Minott” by Campaigning marches
“Jah War” by The Ruts – Riot scene
“Even Though You’re Gone” by Louisa Mark – A grieving song
“Cover Up” by Misty in Roots – Herbert and Yamaye know the police are following them
“Jammin’ for Survival” by Prince Jammy – Yamaye playing tunes for the men in the Safe House
“Night Nurse” by Gregory Isaacs – Monassa coming to Yamaye’s room every night
“Pimper’s Paradise” by Bob Marley & The Wailers – Arrival of Charmaine
“Stir It Up” by Bob Marley & The Wailers – Yamaye decides to take Monassa’s money and go on the run
“City Too Hot” by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry – Yamaye feeling the pressure from Monassa and his men in the Safe House, wanting to escape, talking to Charmaine
“I Need a Roof” by Mighty Diamonds – Yamaye on the run, sleeping in the park
“Hopelessly in Love” by Carroll Thompson – Yamaye thinking of Moose
“Country Living” by Sandra Cross – Yamaye settling in to Cockpit Country
“Natural Mystic” by Bob Marley & The Wailers – Yamaye and Granny Itiba decide to use obeah and herbs to deal with Monassa