Assembly

De: Natasha Brown

Narrado por: Pippa Bennett-Warner

This visionary and unflinching novel is about a black woman who has spent her life carefully navigating cutthroat worlds of privilege in her career and relationships—until one day she is pulled up short by a life and death decision.

Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Go to college, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy an apartment. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.

The narrator of Assembly is a black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend’s family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can’t escape the question: is it time to take it all apart?

Assembly is a story about the stories we live within – those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers.And it is about one woman daring to take control of her own story, even at the cost of her life. With a steely, unfaltering gaze, Natasha Brown dismantles the mythology of whiteness, lining up the debris in a neat row and walking away.

"Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway meets Claudia Rankine's Citizen...as breathtakingly graceful as it is mercilessly true.”—Olivia Sudjic, author of Sympathy and Asylum Road

A woman confronts the most important question of her life in this blistering, fearless, and unforgettable literary debut from "a stunning new writer." (Bernardine Evaristo)

“A quiet, measured call to revolution…This is the kind of book that doesn’t just mark the moment things change, but also makes that change possible.”—Ali Smith, author of Summer

"Brilliant. Brown's gaze is piercing."—Avni Doshi, author of Burnt Sugar

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Natasha Brown’s exquisite prose, daring structure and understated elegance are utterly captivating. She is a stunning new writer.”
—BERNARDINE EVARISTO, Booker Prize-winning author of GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER

“Bold and original, with a cool intelligence, and so very truthful about the colonialist structure of British society: how it has poisoned even our language, making its necessary dismantling almost the stuff of dreams. I take hope from Assembly, not just for our literature but also for our slow awakening.”—DIANA EVANS, author of ORDINARY PEOPLE

“Assembly is brilliant. Brown’s gaze is piercing. Each sentence is a perfectly polished jewel.”—AVNI DOSHI, author of BURNT SUGAR

“Mind-bending and utterly original. Assembly is like Thomas Bernhard in the key of Rachel Cusk but about black subjectivity.”
—BRANDON TAYLOR, author of REAL LIFE and FILTHY ANIMALS

“A quiet, measured call to revolution…[Assembly is] slim in the hand, but its impact is massive; it strikes me as the kind of book that sits on the faultline between a before and an after. I could use words like elegant and brilliantly judged and literary antecedents such as Katherine Mansfield/Toni Morrison/Claudia Rankine. But it’s simpler than that. I’m full of hope, on reading it, that this is the kind of book that doesn’t just mark the moment things change, but also makes that change possible.”—ALI SMITH, author of SUMMER

“A stunning achievement of compressed narrative and fearless articulation.”—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Timely and urgent…Written in a distilled, minimalist prose, Assembly is illuminating on everything from micro aggressions in the workplace, to the reality of living in the ‘hostile environment’, to the legacy of British colonialism.”
—THE OBSERVER, 10 Best Debut Novelists of 2021

“Within a neat 100 pages, Natasha Brown’s precise, powerful debut novel says more about Britain’s colonial legacy and what it’s like trying to exist within that as a black British woman than most could achieve with three times the space…Assembly signals the arrival of a significant talent, one who brilliantly illuminates the entrenched inequalities of our time.”

—THE GUARDIAN

“Assembly is an astonishing work. Formally innovative, as beautiful as it is coolly devastating, urgent and utterly precise on what it means to be alive now.”
—SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, author of THE WATER CURE

Amazing

It’s rare a book touches me as deeply as this one did. Beautiful work. I hope the author writes more in the future.

Wow! So much to discuss

This is a perfect book club read- it seems made for discussions that could go on for as long as the narrative itself.

The narrator is a first generation child of immigrants in the UK, and she is DONE with the way the world reacts to her.

The narrative style reminds me of ‘Wit’. There isn’t a wasted moment in the story. It is short enough to easily start over when you finish.

You gotta read it more than once

This book is a wow. One of the few about race and sex, where every word counts. And the bitter truth of our paradigm is raw and exposed.
You want to know how people of color and female people, in a place which reeks of the stench of institutionalized hatred, feel. Wanna know what goes on inside a brilliant mind when you are being stupid? Well, read this book! If you’d rather stay unconsciously ignorant, don’t come near this book.

Dark and inconvenient truths

A must read to glimpse the perspective of a black woman living in modern England. An important read. Especially for an English white person.

The Caucasity of Bigotry

Once again, Audible/Kindle has conveniently deleted another review 🥴🤬‼️Nevertheless, “Assembly” was an excellent read exposing the caucasity of bigotry, racism & or misogyny directed toward a particular Jamaican-British citizen. The book illustrated (even if subliminally) the cultural and ethnic divides in the UK as well as in American are universal & systemic. This inhuman cultural of imperialism, colonialism, and or white nationalism derived from their desire for supremacy & perceived entitlement in social, political, educational & economic complexes as a measure to maintain some semblance of dominance & control over any ethic race. “Assembly” was a fantastic read. However, I caution some subjects & or events can invoke traumas & or triggers🤷🏾‍♀️‼️