Kate Tempest--rapper, acclaimed playwright and winner of the Ted Hughes poetry award--is a manic whirlwind who lives up to her chosen surname. She's got chops. Her first novel, The Bricks That Built the Houses, is an engrossing story of young Londoners from the wrong side of the river struggling to make it in a world where options are limited, family ties are frayed, and a frothy pint and line of coke help make the days go by--yet they still have their dreams and yearn for love while "forcing a good time out of their tired, broken hearts."
Becky is a 26-year-old music video dancer, barista and on-call "happy ending" masseuse who aspires to join a professional dance company. Her father's a lefty writer and politician in jail for sex crimes with his underage staff. Her mother is a born-again Jew who ran off to the American Midwest. Her boyfriend, Pete, is habitually unemployed, unmotivated and jealous. Despite lofty ambitions, Becky lives in fear of "Twenty years of nothing changing but the rent." Then she meets Pete's sister, Harry, an androgynous lesbian and high-end drug dealer. Becky and Harry connect, and The Bricks That Built the Houses becomes a modern urban love story--albeit one with a world of complications, where the reliable "bricks" of family and meaningful work are not there to support their fragile lives.
Tempest's captivating novel is rich in detail, clever in plot and filled with characters who live on the edge but never quite give up. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.