Review: Assembly

Assembly by Natasha Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Natasha Brown's debut novel is fantastic. It's a book about modern Britain and colonialism. But also about corporations, and money, and politics, and privilege...and Death. There's layers to this book. You can see it peel before you. The narrator says something, and it is powerful, but then she leaves something unsaid. Something hinted. Something implied. And maybe you recognise it, and that's when it hits you. This is a book about you. Of course it is.

There's layers to this book. The subtle nudges that the narrator uses to tell you things she doesn't want to say out loud. The acknowledgement that this is the case. The way reality seems to warp as the narratives merge together into something cohesive. I'm unconvinced I've gotten all of it, all of the signs, the nods, the shrugs, everything that's hidden between these pages.

Rarely does a book so bravely capture a person in all their contradictions, ideas, sufferings, desires, inertias. It is a snapshot into a person who feels real, her judgements of the world feel real. Her actions, her memories, her decisions, they all feel real.

Assembly is a really good book.

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