I couldn't quite work out whether I loved or loathed this book. (I sensed more the former.) Some may find it insufferably smug and self-righteous; others may find it deeply tedious. In any analysis, Hamya is an accomplished and erudite author whose fiction is very much a snapshot of the zeitgeist, capturing much millennial and Gen Z angst. Three Rooms pays direct homage to Virginia Woolf. Both describe the psychological toll of constant compromise. Think of Three Rooms as a cerebral, painfully observant evisceration of contemporary life. An unnamed, highly qualified young woman of colour describes her painful navigation of precarious employment, compounded by the devastating realities of the British housing crisis. Both Woolf and Hamya ask reasonably enough whether it may be too much to ask for a (literal) room of one's own. The account is spiky and acerbic, but for the most part on point. Even if you don't like the narrator or the author, you have to respect them and can understand from where they are coming.
By Jo Hamya