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ClareR (5642 KP) rated Fire Rush in Books

May 11, 2023  
Fire Rush
Fire Rush
Jacqueline Crooks | 2023 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
This is an incredible debut novel. Yamaye is a young black woman who is immersed in the Dub music scene of the 1970s and 1980s. She spends her free time clubbing at The Crypt (it really is a crypt) where Dub music is the music that young black people all want to listen and dance to. Yamaye works so that she can go clubbing and buy the clothes that she wants to wear there (which all sound very cool, by the way).

But there’s a cloud that hangs over Yamaye’s life. Her mother left when she was young, and she has been raised by a father who seems thoroughly heartbroken by his wife’s departure. There’s also the spectre of racism and police brutality looming over her. Yamaye becomes involved in police brutality protests, and then becomes embroiled in a gang in Bristol, leaving London and her troubles there behind. Or so it seems, because it looked to me like she was just swapping one set of problems for another.

I loved this book, and I wish that it had come with a playlist on Spotify (the actual book may well have a playlist, but I read the NetGalley download) - but never fear! I went looking myself, and was ably assisted by my 16 year old drumming mad son. Now he LOVED the music, and regularly drums along to these new bands and songs that he has discovered for himself.

This is an engaging, exciting story with a vibrancy through its descriptions of inner London as much as those of rural Jamaica. The Jamaican patois was for me the icing on the cake. It made such a distinctive voice (quite literally!), and I soon fell into it’s rhythms.

It’s a book that reminded me of how I felt about music as a young woman (ok, it was different music, but still!) and how it crept into everything in my life.

Themes include: race, misogyny, police violence, oppression of people of colour, gangs, the legacy of slavery, music and belonging. At least these are the themes that I could pick out!

It’s an amazing book - just read it!