And it is about one woman daring to take control of her own story, even at the cost of her life. 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. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, set deep in the English countryside. The narrator of Assembly is a black British woman. Go to college, get an education, start a career. A blistering, fearless, and unforgettable literary debut from 'a stunning new writer.' (Bernardine Evaristo)Ĭome of age in the credit crunch. Dalloway.''-THE ATLANTIC 'Mind-bending and utterly original.'-Brandon Taylor 'Slim in the hand, but its impact is massive.'-Ali Smith One woman.

'The electrifying fiction debut that has been called 'a modern Mrs. While it isn’t always possible to walk a mile in another person's shoes, here is an opportunity to understand and to hopefully become smarter about our own assumptions.A NATALIE PORTMAN BOOK CLUB PICK FINALIST FOR THE 2022 LA TIMES ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION. Without history.'Īssembly is smart, painful, truthful and important. Living in a place you're forever told to leave, without knowing, without knowledge. 'It's disorienting, prevents you from forming an identity. And always, assimilate.'Īs described in this slightly genre defying novel, it doesn’t matter how much success she achieves, be it in her personal life or at work, nothing escapes the assumptions people make on the basis of her skin colour. This is how we prepare ourselves, teach our children to approach this place of obstacle after obstacle. No matter how well our protagonist does, how hard she works, how successful she is, it is never good enough. Making her way to the top of her London finance firm while on her way to a garden party at the home of her (white) boyfriend with his politically well connected parents and their old-money privilege, she reflects on a life recently and starkly contrasted by a cancer diagnosis.Īssembly is not only a poignant, thought-provoking account of what it means to be a black woman in Britain, it also draws an all important line to the strong legacy and heavy weight of British colonialism. In this stunner of a short debut novel - sparsely written in vignettes - the unnamed protagonist, a young black woman, finds success in all that she strives for.

The assembly natasha brown