Fire Rush
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- £0.99
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- £0.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2023
AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT NOVEL OF THE YEAR
It’s time to dance, to love, to be free…
‘Mesmerising’ BERNARDINE EVARISTO, author of Girl, Woman, Other
‘Fabulous’ MAGGIE O'FARRELL, author of Hamnet
‘Beautiful’ CALEB AZUMAH NELSON, author of Open Water
Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she can go raving with her friends at The Crypt, an underground club on the outskirts of London. Then everything changes. Yamaye meets Moose, who she falls deeply in love with, and who offers her the chance of freedom and escape.
After their relationship is brutally cut short, Yamaye goes on a dramatic journey of transformation that leads her to Jamaica, where past and present collide with explosive consequences.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE AUTHOR’S CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2024
A SUNDAY TIMES AND GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR
‘A wonderfully literary, musical and original novel about a culture and era that rarely makes the pages of fiction’ TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
‘Scorching… We follow Yamaye through love, loss and peril, as she chases her dreams and connects with her heritage’ GUARDIAN
‘Ambitious, atmospheric… A novel of passion and anger’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘A rich and rhythmic story about love and music’ iNEWS
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Fire Rush is an ambitious debut novel, written with the kind of skill necessary to back up that grand ambition. In one compulsive, taut narrative, Jacqueline Crooks gives us a story of feminist empowerment, of a young Black woman finding herself; a story about state power, state violence and racism; and a kind of thriller. Beginning in the late ’70s, it follows one woman from the edge of London through nights out, fraught friendships, love and tragedy, through moments of transcendent joy and across the path of betrayal and brutal misogyny. Music–Yamaye’s talent, and her refuge–holds a central place in her story, and there’s a musicality to Crooks’ prose from the off, bringing the reader immediately into the character’s world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Crooks's immersive debut, a young Jamaican woman grapples with grief and finds her way in the 1980s English dub scene. Yamaye, 24, lives with her father on the outskirts of London and frequents underground dance parties with her friends, an Irish woman named Rumer and a self-assured Jamaican named Asase. One night at a club, Yamaye meets quiet artist Marlon "Moose" Bohiti. The two fall in love, but then Moose is killed by London police outside his woodworking shop, having been accused of attacking an officer. Meanwhile, Rumer returns to Ireland, and Asase, in a rage due to abuse by a local hustler, stabs a man and is sent to prison. Though a social justice organization rallies behind Moose's case, Yamaye despairs: "Now I've been thrown overboard into a dark sea... nothing to hold on to but coldness and darkness for centuries to come." From these depths, Crooks chronicles an incredible story of Yamaye's struggles and triumphs. First, she's exploited by a Bristol art thief and is forced into helping with his heists. Eventually, she channels her anger into gigs as an MC under the moniker Sonix Dominatrix. The rich descriptions of Yamaye and her friends skanking to the music are immersive and gesture at the spirits of Yamaye's Jamaican forebears: "We're dancing in darkness, skinning up with the dead. I feel them twisting around me, round and round, rattles on their wrists and ankles, broken-beat bodies of sound." This is a triumph.
