"Hey Son, is it me you're using for this book? You're coming to sell me? ... Ah are your immigration officer? Hey Kwesi, move your phone from here".

Losing the plot is a poetic, playful look into the emigration of the protagonists mother from Ghana to the UK. The tale blends realities where opportunities superseded choice and the loneliness of leaving a homeland, only to never be a part of it again whilst never fully integrating into your new home. The story is primarily in English but as outlined at the end, is laced heavily with Twi as to translate certain phrases or elements of the story would change the intention behind the words or the meaning of the chapter. Thankfully I'm comfortable around the language but would strongly advise a Translate app for anyone struggling.

"Love you, Mum.
Why?
What'd you mean 'why'?
No, I mean why are you saying that.
Because I mean it.
Oh, okay, yeah, me too."

For me, the best part was the epilogue, where the author interviews his mother for 'bonus bits', but is met with apprehension and an unwillingness to disclose too many personal details regarding the past. Not dissimilar to conversations I've shared with my own parent about his movement between countries as a child, it struck a chord and made my heart full to see how she could deflect and set a boundary in such a jovial way.

"He's always wanted to ask what she hoped to achieve, 'without me', without displacement, without history, a sentence without words to follow, a life without a plot. She'd say, she'd make life, what that means, he's never known, looking back, what she sees, he needs to let go, let her be".

The story is disjointed, flitting between chapters of mere lines versus whole stories being shared, but I feel that this reflects the premise behind the story - to reflect the unpredictable nature of life and living.

Thank you NetGalley for the Arc.

This is the first time a book has intellectually stumped me.

Owusu interweaves complex prose with a green screen style fourth wall breaking behind the scenes commentary in a more familiar slang. I loved the latter style of writing and found it touching and humorous and a real love letter to his mum (who the book follows on her journey from Ghana to the UK and the struggle to make a living and raise children there).

To me this is not a binge read book. You really have to read chapter by chapter and almost study the text like we did at school to decipher a lot of the metaphors. Personally this made it hard work for me as I read 100% for pleasure.

Owusu is probably doing something literally very important and revolutionary but some parts felt quite inaccessible to me (even when others felt amazingly accessible). I’m still very excited to see what he does next and I’m very happy that Black writers are starting to get the platform to experiment with different forms of literature!

I wanted to read this because I loved Owusu's debut novel 'This reminds me'. I'm sure a lot of people will love this, and it wouldn't surprise me if it winds up on some long or shirt lists, but there was too much I couldn't understand because of the language (untranslated Twi). But this I got: it's very moving, raw and honest, and if the publisher would offer an edition with translated Twi, I would read it again.

Losing the Plot is one of those books you have to read at least twice to actually get.... or I have to read, to actually get because,... what is going on....?

I love books about Mothers and their Sons... so I was of course game! I was just a bit unclear on what was happening. I love the footnote section.

[ Thank you Netgalley for providing a free proof copy in exchange for an honest review ]

(DNF @ 39%)

Honestly, everything about this book screamed something I would love and rave about, but it just wasn't for me. I am sure there are plenty of people who will adore this book. Its writing was so poetic that I'm sure it'll be up for literary awards too. I personally just found the language too flowery to understand. I don't think I could tell you a single thing that happened in the book because the descriptions kept tripping me up and confusing my brain. I just don't think I'm smart enough for this one! Though I did really like the use of the footnotes, adding little bits of extra detail and information relating to the story!

Read most of Derek Owusu’s newest novel in the early hours of this morning. Owusu is an author I will always root for and I’m so glad his second novel is as impressive as his first.

Losing The Plot is a poet’s version of imagined biography. It is somewhat impenetrable at the start but purposefully so. As a reader you must find patience to follow a fictional incarnation of his own mother’s journey, arriving from Ghana to the UK as one of many migrants beginning afresh in the capital.

Heavily footnoted the metaphorical body text is contrasted with conversational, almost confidential tone of Owusu’s self inserts. It felt like a intimate reading experience.

The epilogue was perhaps my favourite. The transcript of an interview between Owusu and his real life mother, as he attempts to collect her own biography as the basis of the book but such is the way with mothers, the interview goes awry and is the perfect window in their relationship.

I found this a difficult book to get into, and felt that I missed a lot of what the author was trying to say. Losing the Plot is fragmented in nature, telling the story of Owusu’s mother and her journey from her arrival in the UK in sixty short chapters, which gives the impression of disjointed memories of a traumatic time. The prose acts less of a tool to share a story, but more a tool to share an idea of a story, with almost meaningless chapters building up to create a foundation of a story. An aspect that I liked in particular was the use of footnotes, through which the son adds narration to his mother's chapters to reference his own memories of his mother while growing up.

All in all, I didn't particularly enjoy this book, though it was a quick read and I'm glad to have read it. My favourite part was the epilogue, where the narrator is interviewing his mother about her experience as an immigrant from Ghana to the UK. Her responses and frequent refusals to answer the questions is both humorous and sad, and gives perspective to the novel as a whole. I think it would be a good novel to re-read, but I'm not rushing to do so just yet.

I really enjoyed his last book, That Reminds Me, and especially the way he blends various voices and accents from around him into something so captivating and unified.

Losing The Plot carries this on in glorious fashion, as we weave between the literary voice on the page and his asides , written in footnotes in South London slang, all as we get a beautiful insight into the relationship between a mother and son.

His love for his mother shines through on every page, a deep bond underscored by jokes, care and arguments, and the end of the book even features the transcript of Derek interviewing his mother

It is heartfelt, stunning, and incredibly clever.

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A real struggle for me unfortunately. I would love to hear an audio version of this, or see it read on stage. I feel the poetry is easier to hear than read.
A great book for a poetry lover, but not for me.

I'm not familiar with this author or his work but was intrigued by the premise of the book (and the cover).
To begin with I struggled with the style feeling it was very disjointed, and the contemporary notes at the end of some of the sections made it feel even less of a whole. However, I realised after a while that the vignettes really worked and I knew and understood a lot more about Osuwu's mother's journey through life than I expected. With this in mind I went back to the beginning and started again, allowing the lyrical prose to permeate my reading at it's own pace- and I loved it!
Thank you to netgalley and canongate for an advance copy of this book.

In Losing the Plot we follow the narrator’s attempts to understand his mother and her life.

Told through a series of vignettes, I adored how swirly and lyrical the prose was. The footnotes offered a switch in style, feeling very candid and sometimes proper jokes! I very much enjoyed the way the tone of the novel oscillated between emotionally raw and playful.

I’ll definitely be purchasing a copy of this for a reread when it’s published!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for access to a digital proof of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

Oh my goodness! This is LITERARY FICTION at its finest!. The language is rich and lush, it demands all of your attention, this isn't a book you pick to rest at the end of the day, this is the book you pick up when you want to wake your brain. It's cardio for the mind. Just beautiful!

A very powerful and gripping story that is difficult to read in some parts but worth sticking with. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

3.5/5.

In January 2020, I read Derek Owusu’s debut novel (which went on to win the Desmond Elliott Prize for debut fiction). In my review of that book, I noted that <i>”It isn’t often…that the first thing I do on finishing a book is turn back to page 1 and read it again.”</i> I note this here because this is almost exactly what I did with this new novel.

Another thing I noted in my review of Owusu’s first book was that <i>”…the structure of the novel is unusual and it isn’t always easy to follow the narrative, if narrative is even the right word to use.”</i> This also is true of this new novel, perhaps even more so than the first. Both books work by impression, by an accumulation of details that the reader absorbs almost subconsciously whilst reading the poetic prose language that can often be difficult to parse paragraph by paragraph. My advice would be to go with the flow: it’s short book and I think the best way to read is possibly to hide yourself away somewhere and let it wash over you - when you get to the end, you will have more of a story in your mind than you thought you had.

The book’s blurb tells us what this story is: it is an exploration of the author’s mother’s life from when she arrives in the UK from Ghana up to the present day. It is presented to us in a series of very short chapters which often include phrases in Twi which themselves often lead to footnotes that take us to the voice of a son almost dictating memories of his mother.

On first reading, I felt that this was a great book but I didn’t understand it properly. On second reading, I am even more convinced it is a great book even though I still would not claim to have understood all the individual paragraphs. But, as I say, I don’t think you need to understand individual paragraphs - you need to let them in and let them work their magic.

Fascinating, powerful and poetic but I didn’t get all of it. I need to read this at least once more really to understand more of the meaning.
Thank you Canongate and Netgalley UK for the ARC.

‘She tightens and folds the ntoma under her arm
while eyes from an incepting mind float around the banks of London,
resting between the respite of touching blades, bones,
weightless, she walks without pause, without her lord–a circlet fades in and out on her child’s temple.
She converses about the shops, what’s inside and what she’d like,
with much reflecting as they walk,
hoping her baby will recall and when he grows will then decide.
His eyes, buoyed or wide, her voice now has somewhere to reside.’

Losing the Plot is Derek Owusu's 2nd novel after the brilliant That Reminds Me which deservedly won the 2020 Desmond Elliott Prize, for most outstanding first novel.

Like that novel this is told in a distinctive style with vignettes in the form of powerful and affecting text, a hybrid of prose and poetry, and with an autofictional element, and like that this is a novel that repays thoughtul reading and re-reading, with more to say that most books that are multiples of the word count.

Losing the Plot focuses on the experience of the narrator's mother, an immigrant from Ghana into the UK, an imagined history of the author’s own mother. There are three sections titled Embarking, Landing and Customs and Immigration (although these labels are more thematic, the timespan embraces her life in the UK), plus an Epilogue with the narrator/author(?)’s mother from 2019 in the form of “a factless interview”, which rather explains the need to fill in the large gaps with fiction.

An interesting and distinctive decision Owusu has made is to leave words in Twi, typically interspersed in the mother’s speech with English, untranslated, as he has explained:

“I made the creative choice not to translate any Twi in my book and also decided against a glossary. So many reasons for this but mainly it's because many West African kids didn't have any of that either. Our parents regularly refused to teach us. Had to figure it out. Welcome”

There is no glossary but they do often come with footnotes, however rather than translations these are direct interventions into the story by the narrator prompted by the word, although sometimes with the translation implicit in the response ('Mi ne sika' prompts a comment about his mother's precarious finances, and a 'Korɔmfoɔ', when someone steals her seat in a doctor's surgery, the narrator's own recollection of how he used to steal from her). For example the first from a scene of the narrator's mother on the plane to the UK:

“To her right, she fights not to be consumed by the compulsion to look, losing so many times the obronis sitting in the next aisle of broken seats may assume she’s inviting them over, those twisting and polishing her tongue,* blowing grammar without savouring the sound, a switched tempo, contorted into another language.”

The corresponding footnote:

“* Okay, so do I just start speaking? Alright cool. Yeah, don’t worry, I got one. Aight, one time we were en route somewhere in Tottenham. My mum bumped into some old friend in the back of the bus. They raise their voices, doing all of that, eiiis and phrases in Twi. Some bald guy in front of us, head shiny like ivory or something, glistening, but I deeped it start turning red, bare patches–man was frustrated. He kept turning around until my mum’s friend, Auntie, everyone is an auntie, really, flicked her nose up to him and said something, can’t even remember what. I thought she recognised him. My mum, who also moved like she knew him, said his name: ‘Who? Obroni?’”

A latent theme in the novel is the psychological trauma of moving to a foreign country (There was one time when I tried to convince my mum that she had depression), one where one perhaps never feels, or rather is allowed to feel, one belongs, and the impact this can have on future generations:

“By the grace of God mi krataa be ba,‡ there’s no guarantee, but for this child, so he can sleep well and me too I can rest, for this handsome boy.

‡ My mum has been in the UK for over thirty years and she still struggles to see herself as British, the way she sees it always changes from one day to the next but she has no problem telling me I’m not Ghanaian. She became a citizen before I was even born, been married twice to ‘Englishmen’, probably just British citizens to be honest, and has lived here longer than me, and yet . . . I know you see what I’m saying.”

This is, as I've said, a book that will repay multiple readings - I immediately re-read it on completion - as I feel I've only scratched the surface so far (for example the mother’s religious faith is another key theme). I suspect this will also make for a wonderful audiobook as there a rhyme and rhythm to the prose poetry that at times requires the reader to vocalise it (not my usual approach to reading).

“Briefly, to see him smile she’ll remember it was him, and she’ll stretch her arms, an embrace with no charm, ingratiated with this terra, hell, an immigrant mother who will die here alone and can only rise with the body of work her son has done well.”

Another wonderful novel and one I hope to see feature on the 2023 Prize lists.

Derek Owusu is a poet whose simultaneously searing and experimental debut novel “That Reminds Me” was the deserved winner of the 2020 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut fiction (a prize he judged this year picking an excellent shortlist and outstanding winner in “Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies”).

I said in my review of that novel: “the book is written in a series of .. short verses, told in a mixture of present and past tense, each representing a fragmentary and impressionistic memory, necessarily distorted through the acts of remembering and forgetting. These can on a first and even second read (on finishing the book I went back and immediately read it a second time) seem jumbled and confusing, but they accumulate to a picture of [the protagnoist] who [they are], what [they have] become, what [they believe] about [themselves] and the formative experiences and traumas that have lead to that position” and that reminds me (sic) of this equally experimental and equally impactful novel also.

The novel is in effect an imagined family biography of the story of Owusu’s Mum, an attempt to understand her life and her journey from her arrival in the UK (from Ghana) up to the present day. An epilogue contains the 2019 transcript of what Owusu calls a “factless interview”, a rather fruitless attempt to “give me everything I needed to write and understand my mother’s story” which falters in the face of his mother’s vague or deliberately evasive answers.

It is written in 60 short (sometimes very short) chapters, arranged in three sections - Landing, Disembarking, Customs and Immigration. Mainly written from the viewpoint of his mother, but with other voices including his own in the main narrative.

As with his previous novel the style is fragmentary and impressionistic, and the reader’s (or at least this reader’s) understanding accumulative rather than immediate as we see something of his mother’s experience of: her flight and arrival, London (living in a bedsit in the Tottenham area), work (in various cleaning jobs), relationships (including two marriages), motherhood (a son and a daughter), church (Charismatic) and English society as well as her memories of her childhood in Ghana and her experience of exile from her original home.

The chapters are in a mix of English and untranslated Twi – the English itself often a part translation of Twi (an afterword says “The languages spoken by the protagonist are English and Twi. These translations are approximations and a lot of their meaning and changing connotations may be lost”). Untranslated Two words are typically followed by a footnote indicator, with the footnotes (sometimes but not always related) allowing the direct voice of the son as he sets out his own memories of his mother, her behaviour, attitudes, fears and strengths.

Another great novel from one of the best literary talents around. I would hope to see this on the Goldsmith’s shortlist next year and would love to see it on the Booker longlist also.