Assembly

It is testament to the genius of Natasha Brown that she is able to tell such an impactful story in such limited prose. The Penguin paperback edition is just 100 pages long, with wide margins, blank spaces, etc. Assembly follows in a similar vein to Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other, highlighting the perspective of and challenges faced by a (successful) black female protagonist in a man's world. However, Assembly also pays homage to Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Both the unnamed narrator of the former and the eponymous Clarissa suffer from perceived alienation and marginalisation, as well as a struggle just to fit in. The circumstances described in Assembly are, however, that much more forceful, simply because Brown's work is also a searing indictment on modern Britain, where racism (both casual and overt) remains an issue — and sexism too. Brown's point is partly that the way in which Britain sees itself is ‘assembled’, partly eliding the injustices of its colonial past. The narrator of Assembly is also forced to ‘assemble’ her own self just to survive, fit in and be accepted — playing by the rules, whether or not they are fair. Brown highlights (in a way not dissimilar to Woolf) that a notional world of possibilities is for some more akin to a world of constraints. The narrator (always unnamed) chooses — to her credit — an eventual yet shocking path to freedom; opting, it seems, to accept a cancer diagnosis over living in an unjust world. 9 out of 10.

By Natasha Brown