"I don't wear my scars, they wear me; wear me down, wear me out, coerce me into increasing their number until they've won the war. Sometimes, I think I may just let them."

Soon after his birth, protagonist K is sent to foster care in the suburbs. At eleven, he returns to his mother and often absent father, and eventually gets a little brother who he loves dearly. Back in the city, he struggles to adapt. The book covers a lot of topics, including identity, racism, family, addiction, violence, sexuality.

This is a difficult book to review. The lyrical prose is quite fragmented, jumping from one topic to the next, making it hard to read. Many facts become apparent to the reader simply through implications, while remaining unspoken. I did enjoy the poetical language, but the book was hard to follow and I feel like many things were left unsaid. I do think the author has a lot of potential.

I was approved for this title last year but it was archived so quickly afterwards that I was unable to download it in time. As such, I cannot access it and I'm leaving this perfunctory review in order to have it not damage my feedback ratio. 5 stars simply so it doesn't affect the title's marketing.

Honestly, I found this hard to follow. I appreciated the beauty of the text and the substance written about. But I felt disconnected from the flow of this book. Partially this could have been a formatting issue for me, but perhaps there is also some connection missing as well from each segment.

Though I love Derek's work and find his writing enwrapping and unusual and vibrant, I found this book really hard to follow. I enjoyed the second half of the book far more than the first, as I was confused as to who was being referred to in the narrative. Derek is clearly a growing talent and I'm sure with his next books his experience will grow and they will have a stronger grounding.

This novella is all about its lyrically shattered, poetic language: If Derek Owusu had decided to choose another typographical presentation of his sentences, this would easily pass as a collection of five prose poems. Our protagonist is simply called K, reminiscent of Franz Kafka's parable-style naming technique - in The Trial, the main character is famously named Josef K., and "That Reminds Me" does share some themes with the Kafka's text, e.g. helplessness, futility, disorientation, and a failing bureaucracy. By re-assembling shattered memories into five distinct sections, Owusu's K makes his own case before the reader and himself, trying to convey his story and to make sense of his own identity from broken-up pieces. At the beginning of every section, K (who is Black) addresses Anansi, the African trickster and storyteller who defies traditional eurocentric conventions of wisdom and narration.

As the title already suggests, the narrative does play with associations - this text has a jazz vibe to it, but the urgent, intense kind. K has stayed in a foster family before moving back to his parents in London. Living in poverty with a hardworking mother, a largely absent, violent father and (later) a troubled younger brother, K tries to come to terms with his sexuality, mental illness, addiction, and the world that surrounds him. Mental and physical pain are inflicted upon him, and he inflicts pain upon himself. Owusu does an excellent job capturing the confusion and pressure that K endures and passes it on to the reader in disturbing, raw prose. To get an impression of the language, you can check out Owusu himself reciting some lines here.

The novella seems to be semi-autobiographical, as Owusu, like K, is of Ghanaian heritage, was raised by a white foster family for some time, and was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The book was published by #Merky, an imprint within William Heinemann curated by grime rapper Stormzy - and it's certainly interesting to read this book in the context of grime music or even GRM: Brainfuck.

Fragmented and challenging, this surely is a great poetic achievement, and my criticism is highly individual: I personally did not really click with the writing, it felt too stylized for me and did not draw me in. To be fair, this needs to be judged as poetry, not literary fiction, and I am the kind of person who usually struggles with such long poems - which is not Owusu's fault. So objectively, this is a very strong book, but it's not my kind of book.

It isn’t often (in fact, it may never have happened before) that the first thing I do on finishing a book is turn back to page 1 and read it again.

That said, this is not an easy book to read. Firstly, there is the subject matter which is dark. I would be careful about who I recommended this book to because especially the second half contains a lot of discussion of alcoholism, self-harm and even suicide. The self-harm sections are especially difficult to read.

Secondly, the structure of the novel is unusual and it isn’t always easy to follow the narrative, if narrative is even the right word to use. What we read is a series of snapshots written in a prose-poetry style. These work by impression rather than detail so the reader’s experience of the book is of a whole series of impressionistic images gradually building together to tell a story. Some of these snapshots are emotional memories, some are violent scenes, some are people sitting on a sofa watching a movie - there is a whole variety of images, like a slideshow that runs across the reader’s mind’s eye creating an overall story. I found I was thinking in terms of movie stills rather than photographs for the image that each short section creates because it does feel like there is an underlying story that is always on the move and we are dropping in at various points (not necessarily in chronological order).

Our narrator is K who tells us his life story. K suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) which Wikipedia defines as “a mental illness characterised by a long-term pattern of unstable relationships, a distorted sense of self, and strong emotional reactions. There is often self-harm and other dangerous behaviour.”

This definition also serves as a reasonable summary of the book. We start in K’s very early life and follow his childhood and early adulthood. In sections entitled Awareness, Reflection, Change Construction and Acceptance, we watch his life develop and gradually disintegrate. There is a lovely balance to the book as the sections are almost symmetrical in length with Change in the centre as the longest and the others being very similar in length to their counterpart on the other side of this central section. I don’t know if this is deliberate on the part of the author, but it gives the feeling of being brought into the heart of something, staying there for a while and then gradually withdrawing, and I found that very effective.

This is a book that deserves to be read slowly, carefully and more than once. It is also, quite possibly, a book that should be read aloud although I didn’t do that myself. I did read parts of it out loud to myself when it was just me in the house. I am a great fan of books that work by impression rather than detail and this one ticks that box in a big way. It is sad, it is difficult to read, but it is definitely worth the effort.

"Lose a memory and you’ve lost a life – so hands stretch into the darkness to bring our living thoughts to the light. Shaking the limbic like a Polaroid until the image is clear, I stare at the face I think I remember, confused as to why you’re not here. If I forgive your absence, then you have to forgive mine, forgive me for not showing up and for struggling to keep you alive. And though we’re not in contact, you’ll always be my mother; we’ll meet again because we never said goodbye."

Perhaps 2018's most exciting new literary voice was Michael Donkor's exploration of British-Ghanian life, Hold an opinion echoed in the Big Issue by Derek Owusu:

"Michael Donkor is the freshest new voice in Black British literature, and Hold crosses borders and brings Ghanaian culture to life in Britain."

So having read Donkor's wonderful review in The Guardian of Owusu's debut from the new Penguin Random House imprint #Merky Books curated by Stormzy - "a singular achievement ... a palpable charge and welcome freshness to the voice" I was delighted to get an ARC via Netgalley.

The first-person narrator K of That Reminds Me is, British-born but of Ghanian origin, and, like the author, was privately fostered as a child to a white family in the countyside, before returning to his mother in London in aged 7. His account of his time in foster care is affectionate, but tinged with a retrospective realisation of the trauma involved, both in terms of displacement from biological family but also from culture.

"Thin lips beneath a film of moisture, my foster mother trying to teach me how to pronounce letters of the alphabet. We flip through Biff and Chip, me waiting for parts with Wilma."

In an interview with Dazed Owusu explains

"When I researched childhood, I read that the first seven years are crucial and everything that happens after that is consequence. So, the book had to cover the first seven years. I haven’t written those first seven years of K’s life as trauma, but it is trauma. Being taken away from his real mum, put in a completely different culture, and then later returning to London – that’s two types of trauma, and that’s what I try to convey.

I wanted to pay respect to my foster mum, but I also wanted to highlight certain things about foster care, particularly if a white family is fostering a black child. They need to know how to take care of their hair, their skin, and how some diseases are more likely to affect a black child."

In his anthology of essays Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space Owusu , in his own contribution, recounted:

"I had no idea that I was black. My foster mum was white, she was older, and she was my mum and I didn’t question any difference between us.

The first time I did, was when I was watching The A-Team, and I saw Mr T as B. A. Baracus. I saw his mohawk. I knew I could do that to my hair, but then I thought about my friends and realised they couldn’t do that to their hair. That was the first time I realised there is something different about me."

All of this is covered in the first 10 pages of the book. K's story, which comprises just 100 pages, goes on to cover, inter alia, his return to London, his relationship with his mother, his coming-of-age and love life, Anglo-Ghanian culture and also male mental health (both K and Owusu suffer from borderline personality disorder) and self-harm.

The story is told in a distinctive style - perhaps the closest approximation visually Han Kang's 흰 (translated as The White Book by Deborah Smith) - with snapshots of memory in the form of prose poetry, often taking up less than a full page. Owusu has explained the origins of the novel in an article in The Guardian:

"I started writing fragments of memory and initially it was going to be a poetry collection, and then it turned into something different."

and in the Dazed interview he went on to explain the style he ended up adopting:

"Q: I wanted to pick up on the point that it’s written in a fragmented, disjointed style – is this meant to mimic memories?

Derek Owusu: Yes, the book was deliberately written that way. Often, I repeat two of the same memories to give the feeling of remembering over and over again and distorting the memory. I wanted each verse to feel like a snapshot, a Polaroid on paper because that's how I see memories. You don't know what happened directly before or after the photo was taken unless they’re photographed too.

And with recalling memories and describing them, we usually leave out the bit before and the bit after unless we feel they are equally as important. Often, we tend to think certain memories are random and useless. We say to ourselves, why do I remember the most irrelevant things? But I think any memory that can be recalled, has meaning and is significant to who you currently are. That's why some of my fragments may seem like random descriptions of actions, but they are meaningful to who K is by the end of the book."

The effect is that what is only a 100 page novel, with blank pages and plenty of space, covers a wide scope of K's life and makes for a highly meditative read - the 100 pages took me longer than the two previous 300-400 page novels - and one where the prose demands to be re-read and contemplated.

Just one example, of a complete chapter/prose-poem:

"I’m watching the day through a breeze-blown slice in my curtains, obscuring nothing but my hour, summer and wind making peace, moving the leaves in the trees standing guard by my window, nervous after my attempts, the sun stroking fronds but leaving others in shadows, seeing the movement of the branches but hearing nothing but the serene sound of cars beyond the garden, limbs waving to me as a bird perches, maybe scouting for a house, onto the bough scratching the glass, knocking to bring me out into contentment while tiny flies shoot in and out of view, their quick existence something I could argue as I smell the fresh air through the dour scent of a depression that hasn’t left my room in days, then swiftly feeling like I’m outside, alive and welcoming the wind to raise the hairs on my arms, a contrast that blossoms into hope."

Impressive - 4.5 stars rounded to 5 as this is a voice that needs to be heard.

A simultaneously searing and experimental debut novel by a writer using his poetry skills, and his own experiences, to convey the life of the first party narrator (“K”), suffering from Bipolar disorder and looking back across his life.

The book is almost the opposite of an easy read, in two respects.

Firstly its style – the book is written in a series of 80+ short verses, told in a mixture of present and past tense, each representing a fragmentary and impressionistic memory, necessarily distorted through the acts of remembering and forgetting. These can on a first and even second read (on finishing the book I went back and immediately read it a second time) seem jumbled and confusing, but they accumulate to a picture of K: who he is, what he has become, what he believes about himself and the formative experiences and traumas that have lead to that position.

At times I felt that the book was Sebald-esque without the grainy black and white photos and the author has, interestingly, said

"I wanted each verse to feel like a snapshot, a Polaroid on paper because that's how I see memories. You don't know what happened directly before or after the photo was taken unless they’re photographed too …….. And with recalling memories and describing them, we usually leave out the bit before and the bit after unless we feel they are equally as important. Often, we tend to think certain memories are random and useless. We say to ourselves, why do I remember the most irrelevant things? But I think any memory that can be recalled, has meaning and is significant to who you currently are. That's why some of my fragments may seem like random descriptions of actions, but they are meaningful to who K is by the end of the book."

The second is the unflinching gaze which the book places on difficult subjects – K’s descent into alcoholism, self-harm and suicidal thoughts and action. In particular, the book has its greatest intensity and clarity of emotion when K is describing his acts of cutting.

K, born to Ghanaian parents in London, is, from an early age placed, via a private fostering arrangement, into the care of foster parents in the Suffolk countryside, while his parents develop their life in London.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2001/jul/25/adoptionandfostering.guardiansocietysupplement)
https://www.channel4.com/news/the-west-african-children-brought-up-by-white-foster-families-in-the-english-countryside

In many ways he has an idyllic and settled life in the countryside, but he is still adrift both from his family and despite he best attempts and the support of his foster mother, from his culture (we get hints of difficulties both with his hair and his health as well as to relate to a different culture) as well as experiencing his earliest struggles with communication and with a sense of self-worth:

When, confusingly to the seven-year old, his foster mother succumbs to the lung cancer (a particularly moving verse conveys how they two develop a deep bond as her health deteriorates – something K sees more as an excuse to spend time alone with her), he is returned to inner-City London (Tottenham) to live with an aunt – having after seven year of his life already experienced trauma, loss and displacement, the long term impacts of which will then play out over his life.

In London, he also starts to explore more of his Ghanian roots as well as what it means to be part of a shared emigrant culture with other youths and a wider family. The framing device for the verses is that they are told to Anansi (the spider god of stories) – further I think representing the older K’s approach to trying to understand who he is and what has happened to him, through the lens of his cultural heritage.

We see a world of poverty, of pirated videos, evangelical religion, a developing Grime scene, knife-crime, inner-city riots.

While K himself experiences sexual exploration, paternalistic neglect and physical abuse at the same time proudly bringing up a younger brother.

And then as the impact of his earlier life bleeds through (literally) into his adult life, we see the painfully chronicled descent of his mental health and its physical impact.

I would not be surprised to see this novel featuring later in the year on (at least) the Booker longlist. One interesting aspect of the book is the use of experimentation to convey black male experience, something I think is unusual (the author himself has said “Writers of colour aren’t really given the space to be experimental.”) and may also mark this book as a strong contender for the Goldsmith.

That Reminds Me is a carefully constructed prose novella charting the coming of age of K, a British-Ghanaian boy, and his experience of mental illness as a young adult.

Though it took me a few pages to tune in to Derek Owusu's steam of consciousness style of writing, once I had settled in to the cadence of his voice the book went by in a blur. At times the prose teeters on the edge of being overwrought but is always successfully reeled in, and its frenetic pace perfectly aligns with the main character's frantic search for self in the midst of an ever changing, unstable environment. A skillful debut, peppered with folklore; this is a very interesting new take on the bildungsroman. I look forward to reading more from Owusu in the future.

I ended up really enjoying this short book. The lyrical writing wasn't always for me as I felt it was confusing alongside the changing narrative, however it was poetic and there are some beautiful lines in here. Derek's story is hard-hitting and I feel the immense power of what was happening to him was hidden being the lyrical writing (I still can't decide if this is a good or bad thing). In the end, it was Derek's talk of diagnosis, self-harm, depression and how his family behaved in the that really made this book for me. The beginning wasn't the strongest but that end made it.

That Reminds Me is critically acclaimed poet Derek Owasu's debut novel in verse and boy is it incredibly hard-hitting, powerful and thought-provoking. It is by no means a comfortable read as it explores many of today's prevalent topics with unflinching honesty and gutsiness I am so glad I encountered; Owusu is a raw and real talent and the type that emerges merely once in a blue moon. It tells the story of K, a young, British-Ghanaian as he relays his life experiences from birth through to adulthood to Anansi, the West African god of stories. He discusses his time in foster care, feeling like an outsider in his school days, his first sexual encounters and his turbulent search for identity, and I must say that I was thoroughly absorbed; much more than I had initially expected knowing of the heavy issues he addresses right from first page through to last.

Towards the end of the book it begins to talk about the despair felt due to mental illness; the devastation it can cause to both the lives of sufferers and their family and friends. It references his mother's intense struggles and his ongoing battle to deal with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and the self-harm, depression, suicidal thoughts and institutionalisation that often accompanied it. He goes further by depicting the stigmatisation and resulting isolation of sufferers to which I found myself fighting back tears; all are treated with the utmost compassion and understanding. These extensive, detailed mental health woes very much come across as either superbly researched or as first-hand accounts; purely because of the amount of emotion and way everything was described, e.g. in such a stark yet compassionate manner, I would plump for the latter.

Despite its brevity (it runs to a mere 100 pages), this has to be one of the most grounding and profoundly moving books I have ever read. It's at once devastating and heartfelt; simultaneously despairing yet hopeful. This isn't a book you enjoy in the usual sense of the word as it can be quite harrowing, but nevertheless, it is one you drink in and process and one that will change your outlook and mindset. A truly phenomenal piece of writing and a special coming of age tale unlike those that have gone before. It charts the immense challenges a single soul can be faced with as they attempt to grow and fit-in in a chaotic and ever-changing world. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Merky Books for an ARC.

That Reminds Me is raw, unflinching, poetic and unlike anything I’ve read before. A very quick read, I opened this up just to get a sense of it, and found myself racing through to the end in one sitting.

A young British-Ghanaian man, K, relates the events of his life to Anansi, the African god of stories. The story begins with K being sent into foster care as a baby, later returning to his family in the city, struggling to fit in at school, growing up and finding out who he is. K’s cultural soup is a mix of West African tradition, Christian gospel church, Eddie Murphy movies, and grime music, among other things.

The style is a fragmented and frenetic, often disorienting, whirlwind. Events speed past before the reader can find something to grip onto: the birth of a brother; fleeting glimpses of an absentee dad; early sexual experiences; the London riots. Each fragment of memory eddies and bleeds into the next. The ARC I read had no page breaks – I don’t know if this will be the format of the final printed book, but it added to the feeling of a story delivered in a breathless rush.

The last third of the book relates a harrowing experience of mental illness–including descriptions of self harm–as K becomes suicidal and is institutionalised, dealing not only with his illness (Borderline Personality Disorder) but also the associated stigma and isolation.

So this is some fairly dark autofiction, and the fragmented structure can make it difficult to parse, but the language really lifts it–the rhythms and cadences, the way it slips occasionally into rhyme–and it almost needs to be read aloud to be fully appreciated. That Reminds Me is an unusual, deeply personal prose poem. 3.5 stars.

"There were days when id fall asleep on my arm and wake up to see my wrist covered with the marks of a desperate escape." I have no words, because my words will fail to give justice. so, thank you.

This is a beautiful piece of writing. A prose poem of a novella. Tightly written, nakedly honest, an unblinking examination of a boy’s life from its very beginning until he reaches adulthood. His is a story told with stark realism and yet it is one that is infused with a fragile, delicate beauty. The melodic rhythm of the writing sings to the reader of this boy’s hope, pain and loss. It sings of his early years in care, his relationship with his mother and her illness, and his sexual awakening. It sings of the darkness also; of violence, alcoholism and his crumbling mental health.
This is not a comfortable read but it is one of such urgency and beauty that I found it difficult to put down and impossible to ignore. Read it. Embrace it. Experience it.

I would like to express my thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Books/Merky Books for making a free download of this book available to me.

Owusu writes the story of K, a life story that reads with the cadence and beauty of poetry but also rubs and jars with the joy and pain of living.
Told in what feels like a stream of consciousness, this chapters the highs of lows of K’s life, from his time in care and return to London to his mother’s illness, his first sexual relationships and his deteriorating sense of self.
Although this is a short novel, it’s dense and lyrical and doesn’t make comfortable or easy reading.
K’s life and search for identity is hard to witness. You feel like a bystander who’s powerless to intervene.
But it is a thing of raw beauty and recommended.