Forest Gate, By Peter Akinti Cape £12.99
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Your support makes all the difference.Two teenage boys stand on adjacent tower blocks in the gritty, grotty east London suburb of Forest Gate, with nooses around their necks. They jump. Ashvin, a Somalian refugee, dies. His friend James, the youngest member of a notorious family of drug dealers, survives. Ashvin's sister, Meina, visits James in hospital – and as their relationship blooms, so too does the hope that they can escape the brutality and trauma they've each experienced.
This is a hard, painful novel. At 184 pages, it's a short but densely textured read. There are times when the prose is too flatly declarative – "James sighed, thinking about the distance that had grown between him and his brothers." But, mostly, James's gradual, fragile redemption – symbolised by the slow healing of the lesions on his neck – is very well conveyed. Peter Akinti is also good at conveying a sense of place: the urban sprawl of east London comes to life here, as does war-torn Somalia and, unexpectedly, the contrasting tranquility of Cornwall.
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