Fire Rush: SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023

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Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their Also set in the 70s, but this time in Belfast, Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses sees a young Catholic woman fall in love with a Protestant married man. What makes it a quiet masterpiece is its utter conviction and evocation of emotion, time and place, with unexpected moments of humour while it sweeps towards its inevitable conclusion. Even though you know where it is heading, the ending offers a moment of such clarity and unsentimental connection that we were all moved to tears. Devastating and beautiful, there is not one false note. I can’t write in the mornings. During the day, I collect lots of energy and thoughts and [by] the evening I know what I want to write. My whole day is a warm-up act. Set in the 70s in London we meet Yamaye who is from Jamaican heritage. She goes out partying with her friends on a weekend to an underground club called The Crypt. They get to whine, and grind and meet other people, but also The Crypt is a way for them to let go of all things that holds them down and escape for a bit. During a night at The Crypt Yamaye meets Moose, a furniture maker from Jamaica and they fall madly and deeply in love. For them, their relationship is an escape, a safe space, a place for them to feel whole. Few have channelled so well the skittering beats and transcendent air of dub music as Crooks does in her semi-autobiographical debut... Startlingly vivid reading Daily Telegraph, *Summer Reads of 2023*

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. We have no history,” says Asase, of a rootless nocturnal community sequestered away in tiny flats, where parents are either missing or withering away, where jobs are part-time and hopeless, and where men are directionless and dangerous. “I wonder why I attract these kinda men,” thinks Yamaye after one abusive encounter with a dancer known as Crab Man. “[Men] who are just like my father.” An impressive debut . . . Crooks has crafted a richly textured world . . .[ Fire Rush]succeeds with great aplomb.”— The GuardianTom Crewe recalls the “pressure cooker feeling” he had in the buildup to getting his boldly brilliant debut finished. He had the idea a decade ago, it was four years in the writing – around his job at the London Review of Books (LRB) – and he says he was “just desperate to get it out of my head… I felt like it was so much to be carrying around all day long.” Reaction to the book has also been strong, with Anne Enright declaring it “electrifying”. I think it maybe helped keep the dialogue tight. I’m very drawn to the kind of witty repartee you get in good romcoms. I’m a big Richard Curtis fan and I adore Nora Ephron. I watch When Harry Met Sally basically monthly. It’s like part of my menstrual cycle. After their relationship is brutally cut short, Yamaye goes on a dramatic journey of transformation that leads her to Jamaica, where past and present collide with explosive consequences. I absolutely hate that I didn't love this book because I felt like the writing was done beautifully and that the author conveyed the setting and conditions of Jamaicans in London during "Babylon" quite well, especially for her debut novel. But I have to be honest and say that for me it was just okay. I think that part of the reason is that the dialect threw me off at times and that is an issue with me, not everyone. There were times I just didn't know what was being said even though I tried. So it was slow going for me and I really struggled with it.

For her debut, Crooks has set herself a complex task, especially in conjuring a spirit world just beyond Yamaye and the reader’s grasp. She succeeds with great aplomb, mapping lives “caught in the contractions of the past, trying to find their futures”. Tragedy strikes and Yamaye's world is turned on its head, losing Moose, Asase and Rumer within a very short time. Wounded and needy, she moves to Bristol, but controlling people surrounding her. She can't escape the regression to her childhood self, as her father appears to materialise in other people. She is living in a 'Safe House' which is anything but safe, and it is here she attempts to locate some connections to her roots, to Jamaica, to free herself from the torment of everyday living. I believe this is Jacqueline Crooks' first novel length publication and I'm so excited by her as a writer! This doesn't come out until next March, but definitely but this on your to-read list because it's a fantastic book! A colourful, immersive debut... Throughout, a passion and anger resound as we gain a glimpse into a rarely observed British subculture Sunday Times, *Summer Reads of 2023*

Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she goes raving with her friends, the “Tombstone Estate gyals,” at The Crypt, an underground dub reggae club in their industrial town on the outskirts of London. Raised by her distant father after her mother’s disappearance when she was a girl, Yamaye craves the oblivion of sound – a chance to escape into the rhythms of those smoke-filled nights, to discover who she really is in the dance-hall darkness.

My partner. He’s a psychotherapist and he was really helpful in talking to me about what it meant for these girls not to have a father. He’s not an overpraiser and he doesn’t read commercial fiction – he’ll reread Heart of Darkness on holiday – but he said: “I think you’ve got something here.” There’s a slightly S&M feeling to writing in academia, where the premium on accuracy is just so high. Maybe it was a rebellion against that: I was like, am I allowed to do this?! And I thought, yeah, why not? His work means so much to me. One of the things he does really well is make you feel sorry for everybody. Everybody’s struggling, everybody’s messing everybody else up and punishing each other all the time. It’s part of being human. AC Sumptuous, richly detailed, chilling and ingenious, Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait boldly reveals from the start that its 15-year-old protagonist is going to be murdered. Set against the male power and politics of Renaissance Italy, this is the story of Lucrezia, a young woman with spirit and intelligence who is forced into a marriage and refuses to be subdued by her husband Alfonso, Duke of Ferrari. None of us could put this immaculate masterpiece down. It was really important to me that Margo be vibrant and sexy and still getting into chaos. A lot of commercial fiction portrays older women as sitting in the corner wearing a cardigan. I wanted someone who was definitely not in the corner. In my heart and spirit, I feel very much a thirtysomething, but I’m closer to Margo than the girls in age. While not quite my favorite of the shortlist, I would be thrilled if this book won - it's fresh and original, not to mention an excellent read. Definitely deserving of it's place on the shortlist.This was a really fantastic book with powerful themes and resonant language. It may take you a while to get the 'riddim' of the Jamaican patois, but I didn't find it too long. (I looked up some words out of interest, but you could get 90% of it from context). The patois adds a real element to the book; it feels vibrant and almost like poetry at times. Crooks has represented the rhythm of music - mostly dub reggae, but also traditional music - through her words and it is mesmerically effective. You really feel like you are there jivin with the girls, the beat pulsin ya body. I was truly transported. Far be it from us to say you saw it here first. Patel, who signed with the tiny indie press Rough Trade Books when “no one else was listening”, now says: “I was coming from so far outside the publishing world; the industry felt very remote and extremely closed. No one knew about I’m a Fan, which was basically DIY; that list, which everyone pays attention to, legitimised a book that didn’t have the machine behind it.” The list is completed by Pod by Laline Paull, who was previously shortlisted for the prize in 2015 for her novel The Bees.

When their relationship is brutally cut short, Yamaye goes on a dramatic journey of transformation that takes her first to Bristol - where she is caught up in a criminal gang and the police riots sweeping the country - and then to Jamaica, where past and present collide with explosive consequences. When you’re going through a hard time, there’s that narcissistic feeling: how can everybody else not see that this is a catastrophe? How is everybody else just getting on with their daily lives? But that’s the experience of ‘apocalypse’ that we’re all having right now,” he says. “Everybody kind of knows the world is ending but most people aren’t engaged in strident climate denial or Extinction Rebellion. Most people think, ‘We’ll probably be incinerated soon, but I dunno.’” Because 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.” This isn't a book for the faint-hearted; it is really full of grief and heartache. Crooks has said it is loosely based on her life, and I ache to think of someone living this life. Not only racism, but police brutality and injustice, being stalked, confinement, organised crime, rape, self-harm and murder are among the themes. They are all dealt with very sensitively, but do start reading this book aware of the challenges you will read about. Chip, if you don’t like it!’ She’s in my face, her eyes popping. Then she links arms with Rumer. ‘You won’t go soft on me,’ she says to her.

I found this awesome playlist I had to share, because you'll want to be groovin to summat after readin this! https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/20... I have school exercise books from when I was six that say: “When I grow up I want to be an author.” I knew that was what I was going to do with my life. I look at the signatory’s name printed on the chequebook: Lucy Blewitt. I wonder who the hell this Lucy is, and I can’t believe that Asase is hustling again.