Author(s): Natasha Brown

Fiction

A woman confronts the most important question of her life in this blistering, fearless, and unforgettable literary debut from "a stunning new writer." (Bernardine Evaristo) "Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway meets Claudia Rankine's Citizen...as breathtakingly graceful as it is mercilessly true."--Olivia Sudjic, author of Sympathy and Asylum Road Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Go to college, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy an apartment. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going. The narrator of Assembly is a black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can't escape the question: is it time to take it all apart? Assembly is a story about the stories we live within - those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers.And it is about one woman daring to take control of her own story, even at the cost of her life. With a steely, unfaltering gaze, Natasha Brown dismantles the mythology of whiteness, lining up the debris in a neat row and walking away.

Review by Fantine;

'A precise and powerful debut, the best book I've read in 2021 so far.

A woman prepares to spend the weekend at her boyfriend's old-money family manor; leading up to this weekend our unnamed narrator pieces together what has led up to her, a woman of Jamaican descent and middle-class upbringing, to ascend the social and economic ladder and join the upper percentile.

This novella is a searing look at the myth of meritocracy and assimilation through incredibly effective fragmented prose, an unflinching examination of the continuing exploitation of the British Empire and the reality of who benefits from the ‘common wealth’. Perfect for fans of Bernadine Evaristo and Jenny Offil’

- Fantine, Bookseller at Collins Moonee Ponds