Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Salem Main Library | Tempest, K. | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Becky, Harry, and Leon are leaving London in a fourth-hand Ford with a suitcase full of stolen money, in a mess of tangled loyalties and impulses. But can they truly leave the city that's in their bones?
Kate Tempest's novel reaches back through time--through tensely quiet dining rooms and crassly loud clubs--to the first time Becky and Harry meet. It sprawls through their lives and those they touch--of their families and friends and faces on the street--revealing intimacies and the moments that make them. And it captures the contemporary struggle of urban life, of young people seeking jobs or juggling jobs, harboring ambitions and making compromises.
The Bricks that Built the Houses is an unexpected love story. It's about being young, but being part of something old. It's about how we become ourselves, and how we effect our futures. Rich in character and restless in perspective, driven by ethics and empathy, it asks--and seeks to answer--how best to live with and love one another.
Kate Tempest, a major talent in the poetry and music worlds, sits poised to become a major novelist as well.
Author Notes
Kate Tempest grew up in southeast London, where she still lives. She has gained acclaim as a poet, playwright, rapper, and recording artist. Her long poem Brand New Ancients , conceived as a performance piece, won the Ted Hughes Award for Poetry in 2012. In 2014, her album Everybody Down was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize and she was selected as one of this decade's Next Generation Poets by the Poetry Book Society. She is also the author of the collection Hold Your Own . This is her first novel.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Two pairs of twentysomethings in modern London-Harry, a drug dealer, and her best friend, "tough" Leon; Becky, an erotic masseuse and dancer, and her overprotective boyfriend, Pete-try to find their place in the gritty underbelly of London. Tempest builds on the stories first outlined in her hip-hop album Everybody Down to create a dark tale of coming-of-age in an unforgiving world (http://ow.ly/B4Ox305Mqi9).-Mark Flowers, Rio Vista, Library, CA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Rapper-poet Tempest (Hold Your Own, 2015) does not stray far from her roots in her first novel. In elegant, purposeful prose, she offers a work that is part character study, part love story. Set in London's seedy underbelly, the tale follows Becky, a struggling dancer who makes ends meet as an erotic masseuse, and Harry, the public half of a drug-dealing duo. When the two meet one night in a bar, there's an instant connection (Harry likes girls; Becky likes people), and over the coming months, the two weave in and out of each other's lives, a strange dance that culminates when circumstances force them to flee London. Intertwined with their stories are the stories of the people who have shaped their lives. With a scope that rivals Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex (2002), Tempest juggles themes of family, history, and womanhood. To be a woman, you must struggle, one character hears. We will never be applauded for getting it right. In their ongoing search for meaning, Becky and Harry never quite succeed. Tempest, however, just might.--Reagan, Maggie Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
BETTER LIVING THROUGH CRITICISM: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth, by A. O. Scott. (Penguin, $17.) The author, a co-chief film critic for The New York Times, reconsiders the relationship between criticism and the art it assesses; rather than art's antithesis, such evaluations are part and parcel of the creative process. "Criticism, far from sapping the vitality of art, is instead what supplies its lifeblood," Scott writes. DREAM CITIES: Seven Urban Ideas That Shape the World, by Wade Graham. (Harper Perennial, $15.99.) Graham chronicles the familiar institutions around which the world's cities are organized - including shopping malls, monuments and suburbs - and profiles the designers and planners who imagined them. Cities, in his view, are best seen as "expressions of ideas, often conflicting, about how we should live." A MOTHER'S RECKONING: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, by Sue Klebold. (Broadway, $16.) Klebold, the mother of one of the teenagers who killed 13 other people and themselves at Columbine High School in 1999, approaches her book gingerly: Aware that the project could draw ire or claims of insensitivity, she uses it to warn about mental illness and consider what could have been done to prevent the tragedy. THE BRICKS THAT BUILT THE HOUSES, by Kate Tempest. (Bloomsbury, $16.) Tempest, a spoken-word poet and a rapper, reprises characters from earlier work in this, her debut novel. Harry is socking away money for the future by dealing cocaine to the wealthy, while Becky, an aspiring dancer, works as a masseuse. Tempest turns her ear for language to their love story, as well as the characters that surround them. "The cumulative effect is deeply affecting: cinematic in scope; touching in its empathic humanity," our reviewer, Sam Byers, wrote. ALL THINGS CEASE TO APPEAR, by Elizabeth Brundage. (Vintage, $15.95.) How much tragedy can one farmhouse hold? When Catherine Clare, a college professor's wife in small-town New York, is murdered in her bed, it recalls an earlier trauma at the house: an incident that left three brothers orphaned. Brundage unspools stories of the Clares' marriage and their home in this masterly thriller. ONLY THE ANIMALS: Stories, by Ceridwen Dovey. (Picador, $18.) Dovey's narrators are the souls of animals linked to artists and writers, including a dolphin with an affinity for Ted Hughes. In these "tragic but knowing" tales, "the wronged do not howl at their executioners as much as hold their actions in the light, and accept their place in history," our reviewer, Megan Mayhew Bergman, wrote. ?
Library Journal Review
In her first novel, playwright, poet, rapper, and winner of the Ted Hughes Award for poetry Tempest re-creates the South London in which she has always lived, peopled with young struggling Brits who want to make a go of their lives, despite the odds. They all have baggage and backstories and families with stories and more baggage. Harry is a lesbian drug dealer working for the mob. Her brother Pete cannot find a job and spends his time reading in a decrepit café. There he meets Becky, a wannabe dancer who supports herself by delivering massages to businessmen in hotels. Tempest's characters are the bricks that build the houses; the more she explores their lives and the lives of their friends and families, the higher the buildings. It's clear that at any time these delicate structures may come crashing down. VERDICT An intricate tale of love and corruption, of failed relationships and lifelong friendships, this novel draws readers down the twisted back streets of South London, into all-night pubs, one-room flats, and fast-food eateries. It's a terrifying adventure well worth taking. [See Prepub Alert, 11/9/15.]-Andrea Kempf, formerly with Johnson Cty.-Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.