The unnamed black narrator of Natasha Brown’s Assembly has a successful career in finance. She’s the bank's poster girl for diversity but frequently belittled by her male colleagues. This weekend, she’s due to visit her white boyfriend’s childhood home, a country estate, invited to celebrate his parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary with family and friends. It marks a turning point, a moment at which she’s faced with continuing along the pathway that leads to assimilation or rejecting all that the wealth and status of this family, bastion of the British establishment, stands for. Rarely explicitly mentioned but humming away in the background is post-referendum xenophobia and the fallout from the Windrush scandal.

Assembly weighs in at a mere 112 pages - it would be even fewer if you stripped the white space from its fragmented narrative - but it’s an astonishingly powerful novel that leaves you a little breathless, exploring themes of class, gender, race and colonialism in detached, precise language. It’s a discomfiting read, one which, despite its brevity, gives you more to think about than many novels which deal with similar themes. An extraordinarily impressive, confident debut which left me wondering which direction Brown would take next.

The unnamed narrator of this novel is a Black British woman who has worked hard to play by the rules to work up the ranks for promotion at the finance company she works for; to purchase her top-floor Georgian flat, which has led her to gain an invitation to her white, upper-middle class boyfriend's parents' anniversary party.

The writing of Assembly was so good, I really enjoy the way that our narrator weaves through various themes of race and British colonialism, class, privilege and control and that she is clearly undergoing a health crisis - it's all so downplayed and yet throws sharp focus at the same time. This was a very short novel (only 112 pages) so I was quite surprised when it came to an abrupt end just before the garden party starts but it made me think about everything I had read and reflect on it.

I would recommend this to fans of Tessa Hadley's writing, An American Marriage or Fleabag.

A stream of consciousness snapshot of the life of a black British woman who has achieved everything and nothing. The writing was, at times, powerful and clever, but lacked heart and depth. Perhaps it was because the character seemed disconnected from herself that I felt equally disconnected. The novel presented some important insights but the story failed to engage me and take flight. It read more like a short story or an essay.

Assembly is a stream of consciousness novel that highlights the racism being experienced by a young woman of colour at her workplace and with her white boyfriend's family.

I am not a fan of stream of consciousness books but read Assembly in one evening. The narrator covers many issues including race, class, sexism and society in general, seen through observant eyes.

I found the structure of the book difficult to follow and, if it had been longer, probably would have given up as it meandered along as a stream of consciousness generally does. Nevertheless I am sure Assembly will find a wide readership. Many thanks to NetGalley and PenguinUK/Figtree for the opportunity to read and review it.

Incredibly powerful. At times an uncomfortable read, full of hard truths about racism in the UK and the class system.

It’s so beautifully written, and the stream of consciousness narrative fits so nicely. The book is enjoyable at so many different levels - the language, the story, the political and social commentary.

I devoured it in one sitting and will definitely be re-reading.

Assembly is a short, stylised stream of consciousness from a female Black British narrator who is preparing to spend the weekend at her (white) boyfriend’s familial home for his parents’ anniversary celebrations. She makes myriad shrewd observations regarding race, social classes, sexism (TW: sexual harassment) the wealth gap, and capitalism, that were interesting and illuminating for me as a white woman. She is disillusioned with her job – despite being outwardly “successful” – and seems to almost have given up on her life, although in more of a resigned way than suicidal. She is reaching for upwards mobility because she feels she owes it to previous generations, who didn’t have her opportunities; she then feels guilty for “convincing children that they, too, must endure”, especially when “best case: these children grow up, assimilate, get jobs and pour money into a government that forever tells them they are not British”. Her best friend says things like “victimhood is a choice”, and her boyfriend doesn’t understand how it is different that she works for her money whilst his is purely inherited. As the title suggests, the narrator regularly refers back to the different perceptions of reality, and how these influence the way people construct themselves. Over the course of the book she grapples with certain decisions that would restructure her existence, as she currently feels forced to fit into a form that isn’t her – but obviously I won’t give away the ending. I didn’t struggle with the style as much as others seem to have, but I enjoy stream of consciousness and don’t miss punctuation like speech marks as long as the narrative flows in a way that makes it easy (or at least not hard) to identify who is speaking or where the action is taking place. It’s short and I read it almost in one sitting: I wish I had managed to finish it like that – I think the ending would have had more of an impact – but I was at the hairdressers and my appointment ended! It’s a stunning debut and I have no doubt that Brown will garner much success and critical praise, and hopefully follow it up: I would love to read a longer novel from her.

Perhaps I am not educated enough to appreciate this book the way it was intended. I felt that I was reading a long poem with no structure. There was no indication of who was talking, what about, when and where they were. It also changes every few sentences.

I get the broader picture of race and gender inequality and also understand the decision that the main character makes based on how her life is going. However there is not a character build, full story or even a chance to understand what is fully happening.

Only finished the book because it was short, if it had been a longer book I would have given up. Not for me but may appeal to others.

Assembly by Natasha Brown is a short but succinct snapshot of a black woman’s life. I enjoyed it but I feel that need to re read the novel in order to fully understand it.

This was definitely like no other book I’ve read before. I found it challenging and captivating. Its from the perspective of a young black woman who works in the corporate world and set around a week where she gets a promotion, that’s a bit of a slap in the face, she finds out she has cancer, and she’s going to a party at her wealthy white boyfriend’s parents house.
She seems to have it together and everyone else seems to know her based on stereotypes and biases but what they believe and say to her is so different than what her inner voices say. The writing style took some getting used to because it was very intimate yet seemed very detached, but it felt like a choice because of the mental state of the character. It was written in verse and I think listening to it on audiobook would be really amazing.
I really enjoyed reading this and thought it was a fresh perspective.

Well, this was uncomfortable reading. I found it painfully sad.
It's about a woman giving up. It seems no matter how strictly she obeys the rules she's been given to increase her chances to succeed against the odds, there's always... will always, be someone to knock her down. She sounds exhausted and defeated. So defeated she chooses to opt out of treatment for cancer, and there's no one, it seems, that she can share that with.
This is a timely book. We know Britain is a racist country, how else do you explain us voting in the Gov that gave us Windrush? But it's more than the in-your-face abusive racism, it's the touching the line and pulling back, the making a joke, the casual asides, the questions and all those other little things that either aren't worth challenging because, well, drawing attention to oneself, being non compliant, not conforming... even from friends, colleagues, extended family. It's that that wears a person down. And then there's the guilt at not challenging, at not speaking out in the assembley talks. At not being honest. At recognising oneself as being submissive and accepting. And disliking oneself. And then getting sick.
There is no cheer and no hope in this book. Or at least none that I could find. Depressing.
As for the writing, there are many wonderful, succinct and insightful passages, but it was a little too leaning towards stream of conciousness for me. Especially at the beginning. Had it started less so and worked towards it as the book progressed it might have been easier to get along with.
So, yeah, quite brilliant, but the early streaming and swift scene/time changes was a lttle disorientating for me, but absolutely worth a read.
Thank you Penguin and Netgalley for the review copy.

Astonishingly clever and sharp.
This is a very short novel, I read in one setting, but was completely absorbed by the observations and experiences of the narrator.
This unnamed black woman carries a huge toll of experiences culminating in a life-changing crescendo of revelations on the day she attends her boyfriend's family get-together.
I loved the jagged and evasive prose, and the way that possibly it reveals snippets of what's happening only to those who have experienced these things themselves because they're subtle but if you know, you know. I felt so many of the stresses and acts this woman was performing, to her sense of weariness from it all.
I found it so real and so representative of the nuances and microaggressions of modern British society, and also how we internalise our experiences and take charge of our destiny through our thought-process.

I devoured Assembly in one sitting - eloquent, beautiful, insightful and bold. Stories within a story, layer upon layer of expectation of others forming who a person is, and a bid to break through the expectation and just be. Almost poetic, you sit up and listen, pay attention to the nuances and are left wanting more.

A brief, powerful narrative, Assembly stands out for its bold, insightful look at class and race in Britain and the unsettled life of a Black British woman whose future is at stake. The narrator, whose name is not disclosed, is examining her life both now and in the past, her relationship, and her place within society.

The writing is smart and the structure is both inventive and interesting, if very interior. The arc is not so much of an arc as a rumination. The author presents several different narratives at the same time, and while this may feel disjointed at first, it is easy to adjust to the style. However, readers should expect a presentation of ideas and perspectives and a kind of reinvention of story within the pages.

A thoughtful narrative of ideas, it may not be everyone’s favourite read, but there is much to admire in the wisdom of its narrator and the intellect of its author, and you may find yourself, as I did, underlining some of the narrator’s keen observations.

I read Assembly in one sitting. It is short, almost a novella, but dense with significance. The writing is astonishing; it packs a punch for something so short. The style is fragmented and economical but adds up to a poetic story of a young woman making her way in the world and facing some difficult choices. Assembly is also a commentary on modern Britain taking on race, class, politics, empire and colonialism. One of the most interesting, elegant and poignant books I have read in a long time. Natasha Brown is an exceptional new voice and talent.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hamish Hamilton for an ARC.

"Generations of sacrifice; hard work and harder living. So much suffered, so much forfeited, so much–for this opportunity. For my life. And I’ve tried, tried living up to it. But after years of struggling, fighting against the current, I’m ready to slow my arms. Stop kicking. Breathe the water in. I’m exhausted. Perhaps it’s time to end this story."

During 2020, during the early stages of the UK’s own attempt to come to terms with its colonial and slave trader past, and its on-going implications into the present as highlighted by the Black Lives Matter protests – there was a period where Bernardine Evaristo and Reni Eddo-Lodge became the first British Black authors to top the fiction and non-fiction charts respectively for “Girl Woman Other” and “Why I am No Longer Talking to White People about Race” respectively.

This short but extremely powerful and superbly crafted book, to be released later in 2021, was for me in conversation with both those books and with the recently Orwell Prize longlisted non-fiction book “The Interest” by Michael Taylor (with its tale of the struggles of a well-connected group of establishment interest to first resist the abolition of slavery and then ensure copious compensation for agreeing to end its atrocities).

Its unnamed narrator – a young Black British woman (who reminded me in many ways of Carole in “Girl, Woman, Other”) has successfully worked her way from her working class beginnings to a senior position in an investment bank, and is on the cusp of further promotion. Her white boyfriend (from an old-monied English establishment family, who secured their fortune from the slave-owner compensation) has invited her to attend a weekend gathering on his family estate – signaling, at least in his view, a further acceptance of her into his family.

But all of this apparent progress has taken place against a constant background of prejudice, condescension, micro-aggressions in all aspects of her life – which she dissects and examines with scalpel like precision .

And the narrator’s health issues give a further sense that this is a crisis/turning point in her life as she pauses to considers whether to continue on her life path – as set out in my opening quote and neatly captured in the book’s Ecclesiastes “chasing after the wind” epigraph.

The book is very short and written in a fragmentary form with prose which has been powerfully distilled to a high level of proof - this was one of those books where I seemed to highlight paragraphs on every page.

Issues that the narrator examines include:

The myths of meritocracy and social mobility

The astonishing arrogance of anti-affirmative action comments – and the almost incomprehensible persistent of the belief that minorities are somehow privileged, protected and over-promoted

The insidiousness of ill-intentioned inclusivity campaigns when designed more to whitewash (pun intended) than to actually address deep-seated issues

Political actions over the years. Her castigation of the path from slave-owner repatriations through Churchill via Enoch Powell to Theresa May’s “Go Home” Vans, Amber Rudd’s Windrush scandal to the inherent racism and hostility to others that underlay Brexit – will get lots of approving nods from the left-leaning literary community. However her brilliant, unnamed demolition of the absurdity and hypocrisy of the under-achieving and over-privileged supposed leader of the woke pointing the finger at The City, and all who work in it, as being the root of all evil (even setting aside the implicit anti-Semitism of that criticism) will make for very uncomfortable reading for many.

"Let’s say: A boy grows up in a country manor. Attends a private preparatory school. Spends his weekends out in the barn with his father. Together they build a great, stone sundial. The boy, now a young man, achieves two E-grades at A-level, then travels to Jamaica to teach. His sun shadows cycle round and round and he himself winds up, up. Up until the boy, an old man now, is right up at the tippity-top of the political system. Buoyed by a wealth he’s never had to earn, never worked for. He’s never dealt in grubby compromise. And from this vantage, he points a finger –an old finger, the skin translucent, arm outstretched and wavering. He points it at you: The problem.

Always, the problem."

Returning to my “conversation” opening, the author has said “I see it as almost one half of a conversation; people are going to read it and bring the other half” – and so for full disclosure my “other half” is sharing the author (and narrators and Evaristo’s Carole’s) working class via Oxbridge degree to City job background, but very much not the inherent institutional disadvantages that come in the City with being Black (and specifically Black not BAME) as compared to the privilege of being white.

Overall an outstanding book – I would be very disappointed to see this not make at least the Booker longlist.

My thanks to from Penguin General UK, Vintage for an ARC via NetGalley

It's hard to know how long a book is when you're reading it on Kindle but I'd say this is under 100 pages long, so a novella rather than a novel. But a novella with a greater weight than most books three times its size.

Over the course of 24 hours, a young British black woman ruminates about her life. She is successful, there's no doubt about that. Coming from a working class family she went to Cambridge and from there into the mysterious (to me) world of finance. On the surface she seems to have made it even down to her upper class boyfriend but is she happy? Can she be happy in a society which continues to oppress her even in her success? A white colleague tells her she was promoted at his expense because of her diversity, an airport worker escorts her from the business class queue to the standard class one, a male colleague contacts her at the weekend expecting her to book his air tickets as his PA is 'offline'. With every one of these insults she feels more and more exhausted. Will she ever be truly accepted in a society which is still colonialist at its core? her boyfriend's family grew rich on the backs of slavery and reading that I am enraged once more that slave owners were compensated for their 'loss.'

I am staggered that so much was said in so few words. This book is an amazing feat and i hope it is widely read and discussed. Thanks to Penguin and NetGalley for the ARC.

"Be the best. Work harder, work smarter. Exceed every expectation. But also, be invisible, imperceptible. Don’t make anyone uncomfortable. Don’t inconvenience. Exist in the negative only, the space around. Do not insert yourself into the main narrative. Go unnoticed. Become the air."

Assembly, Natasha Brown's debut novella is a short but searing story, told in an effective, fragmented style. The first-person narrator is a black British woman from a working-class background, who through a fierce dedication to her education and career has established a successful career at a prestiguous investment bank, and a boyfriend from an upper-class family. But in her account, she reflects on the legacies of Empire (her boyfriend's family gained more from payments to end the slave trade than the victims themselves), institutionalised racism (post Brexit and the 'Go Home' Home Office vans), and the day-to-day microaggressions she faces in her job:

- the recruitment fairs and school visits which fall disproportionately to her, to showcase the bank's diversity, and her own conflicted opinion about participating in them:

"Banks – I understood what they were. Ruthless, efficient money-machines with a byproduct of social mobility. Really, what other industry would have offered me the same chance? Unlike my boyfriend, I didn’t have the prerequisite connections or money to venture into politics. The financial industry was the only viable route upwards. I’d traded in my life for a sliver of middle-class comfort. For a future. My parents and grandparents had no such opportunities; I felt I could hardly waste mine. Yet, it didn’t sit right with me to propagate the same beliefs within a new generation of children. It belied the lack of progress–shaping their aspiration into a uniform and compliant form; their selves into workers who were grateful and industrious and understood their role in society. Who knew the limit to any ascent.

I’d rather say something else. Something better. But of course, without the legitimacy of a flashy title at a blue-chip company, I wouldn’t have a platform to say anything at all. Any value my words have in this country is derived from my association with its institutions: universities, banks, government. I can only repeat their words and hope to convey a kind of truth. Perhaps that’s a poor justification for my own complicity. My part in convincing children that they, too, must endure. Silence, surely, was the least harmful choice."

- one-half of a conversation, presumably with a colleague from the EU post Brexit:

"What It’s Like

No, but originally. Like your parents, where they’re from. Africa, right?

Here’s the thing. I’ve been here five years. My wife–seven, eight. We’ve been working, we’ve been paying our taxes. We cheer for England in the World Cup! So when the government told us to register; told us to download this app and pay to register, it hurt. This is our home. We felt unwelcome. It’s like if they said to you: Go back to Africa. Imagine if they told you: no-no, you’re not a real Brit, go back to Africa. That’s what it’s like.

I mean it’s–well, you know. Of course you do, you understand. You can understand it in a way the English don’t."

- and perhaps my favourite, when she and a white male colleague receive a joint promotion: "the boys are heading downstairs for a cheeky one to celebrate - you coming along?"

And her own concern that perhaps this all isn't worth it (with implications for a key personal issue in the story), the book's epigraph taken from Ecclesiastes (this too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind):

"Generations of sacrifice; hard work and harder living. So much suffered, so much forfeited, so much–for this opportunity. For my life. And I’ve tried, tried living up to it. But after years of struggling, fighting against the current, I’m ready to slow my arms. Stop kicking. Breathe the water in. I’m exhausted. Perhaps it’s time to end this story."

As someone who has worked for many years in the banking sector, this is very accurately portrayed (both the apparent meritocracy and hence relatively equal opportunity, and the reality), reflecting the author's own background in the sector. Indeed like the author/narrator I'm from a working class background, but Cambridge maths educated and worked at a senior level in the banking sector - but I'm white and male and so my own personal experience of what she experienced is fundamentally very different and much more privileged.

And - in the week of the death of a monarch's consort this is a searing indictment of the legacies of the British Empire, and a few weeks after the report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities concluded that apparently "geography, family influence, socio-economic background, culture and religion have more significant impact on life chances than the existence of racism," this effectively makes the countercase.

"I’ve watched with dispassionate curiosity as this continent hacks away at itself: confused, lost, sick with nostalgia for those imperialist glory days – when the them had been so clearly defined! It’s evident now, obvious in retrospect as the proof of root-two’s irrationality, that these world superpowers are neither infallible, nor superior. They’re nothing, not without a brutally enforced relativity. An organized, systematic brutality that their soft and sagging children can scarcely stomach – won’t even acknowledge. Yet cling to as truth. There was never any absolute, no decree from God. Just viscous, random chance. And then, compounding."

Recommended - 4.5 stars rounded to 5 - and thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.

Potent is the word I might use to sum up Natasha Brown’s short book titled Assembly. An unnamed Black British woman narrates the story which is loosely set in a 24 period at a posh countryside garden party but with detours to past transformative moments, many linked to institutional racism or micro-aggressions by the wealthy and powerful. At its heart, it explores ‘assembly’ from a variety of perspectives: from a literal assembly with young people inspired by your successes (a façade of ‘doing the right thing’ according to the narrator) to the metaphorical way in which the pieces of identity are assembled – or torn apart. The medical diagnosis the narrator has just received brings her a raw clarity – a metastasis of her life experiences as she wrestles for control of her future.

As an educator, I think this is a must-study for our Sixth Formers. It is beautifully written, highly original and necessarily provocative as it rips away the idea (put forward in the recent Sewell report) that there is no structural racism.

This is a very short book and it is probably best to set aside a couple of hours in which you can read it in a single sitting. That’s just my thinking, of course, and you can spread it across as many days as you want to. However, you might find that once you start you don’t want to stop until you get to the end.

Our unnamed narrator is a young Black British woman who is struggling with the pressures of living with racism, misogyny and capitalism. She has worked hard to reach a place of relative financial comfort, but she has done this, she comes to think, by the way she has lived in order to fulfil everyone’s expectations of her.

It’s a very topical book that, in a fairly delicate way (think iron fist in a velvet glove, though) picks out a lot of current issues such as the way the men in the office always turn to the woman in the meeting when it comes time to make the coffee (I have to say this was never, as far as I remember, my experience when I was working), the microagressions that so many still face on a day-to-day basis, the full on racism. In the light of the ongoing discussion (at the time I write this) regarding the UK Government’s report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, this makes for a challenging perspective. The book also takes time to consider capitalism and class.

In the midst of all this, our narrator faces a challenge that gives her the opportunity to take control of her own life. But I’ll say no more about that.

Written in a somewhat disjointed style that progresses several narrative ideas in parallel, this isn’t really a book for those who like a beginning, middle and end with a plot to carry them through. Several sections of the book are almost essay-like and it’s one of those novels that throws everything into a melting pot and lets it all blend together. As a general statement, I like that kind of approach in a book, and I think it works well here.

I found this book a little difficult to follow at times. The first person narrative style has a tendency to slip from observation to stream of consciousness with no clear delineation, so I found it hard to know if I was following action and dialogue or an internal musing on events taking place.
The narrator, a black female, aspires to exist in a world where she feels she ‘belongs’ but to do that she must ‘emulate. It takes practice.’ This is a book that reflects on what it means to be an outsider. She has ambition and drive and has used all educational advantages to get a job is a world which appears to be male dominated, white and middle class. She does not seem happy in her chosen life, and appears to be constantly assessing others to gauge what more she must do to succeed and fit in. She complies and trades what she wants to do (like tell a male colleague to book his own ticket) with what won’t make her appear ‘difficult’.
I don’t feel like a really got to know the narrator, or any of the other characters that are mentioned and referenced at times. There is the suggestion of Cancer and a denial of treatment, I think, but the hints and gaps just left me guessing.
An interesting read, but not something that I fully understood. The introspection and discomfort of the world in which the narrator existed just made me wonder why she kept chasing this ‘story of my social ascent’ and whether the ‘price of admission…a fictionalization of who I am’ was worth it in the end.