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Mameluke Bath
"The writing is beautiful and the characterisation tender, funny and satisfyingly voyeuristic."—Hannah Eaton, author of Naming Monsters
Mameluke Bath is the bizarre story of Christie Smithkin, a 39-year-old misfit, misanthrope and virgin, who lives in the nightmarish English city of St Pauly.
Friendless, paranoid, and lacking the funds she needs for the completion of her PhD thesis, mixed-race Christie’s only hope lies in a new ‘asylum-seeker mentoring’ scheme for which she has recently volunteered as a mentor. Offering guidance to recently-arrived African refugees fleeing torture will, she prays, provide her with a sense of social purpose and perhaps even emotional connection.
Christie’s plan goes awry when she discovers that Mukelenge, her Congolese mentee, has already been assigned a mentor: Damon, a cheerful, vapid, white male nurse. Worse still, Mukelenge is settling into urban East Midlands society with unnerving confidence and poise. Piqued by the immigrant’s miraculous feats of integration, Christie becomes uncontrollably jealous when she realises that Mukelenge is also casting a spell of seduction over the handsome, doll-like Damon.
Christie’s determination to solve the mystery of Mukelenge’s identity, to rescue Damon from the real or imagined horrors of a zombie-factory deep in the woods, and to come to terms with her own terrifying childhood, will hurtle all three protagonists towards a macabre conclusion in the nearby spa town of Mameluke Bath.
Mameluke Bath is the bizarre story of Christie Smithkin, a 39-year-old misfit, misanthrope and virgin, who lives in the nightmarish English city of St Pauly.
Friendless, paranoid, and lacking the funds she needs for the completion of her PhD thesis, mixed-race Christie’s only hope lies in a new ‘asylum-seeker mentoring’ scheme for which she has recently volunteered as a mentor. Offering guidance to recently-arrived African refugees fleeing torture will, she prays, provide her with a sense of social purpose and perhaps even emotional connection.
Christie’s plan goes awry when she discovers that Mukelenge, her Congolese mentee, has already been assigned a mentor: Damon, a cheerful, vapid, white male nurse. Worse still, Mukelenge is settling into urban East Midlands society with unnerving confidence and poise. Piqued by the immigrant’s miraculous feats of integration, Christie becomes uncontrollably jealous when she realises that Mukelenge is also casting a spell of seduction over the handsome, doll-like Damon.
Christie’s determination to solve the mystery of Mukelenge’s identity, to rescue Damon from the real or imagined horrors of a zombie-factory deep in the woods, and to come to terms with her own terrifying childhood, will hurtle all three protagonists towards a macabre conclusion in the nearby spa town of Mameluke Bath.
288 pages, Paperback
First published August 2, 2013
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264 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Asibong
11 books4 followersAndrew Asibong was born in Derbyshire in 1977. He currently lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 20, 2013
Andrew Asibong’s debut is by turns insightful, scathing, shocking, and comic. Asibong repeatedly returns to Lewis Carroll, both in content and language, which is appropriate, because Mameluke Bath has elements both visionary and playful in it. Lines between male and female, one’s self and the other, and alien and native, are continually toyed with and blurred. This is done primarily through Pinky and Diamond, the novel’s two central characters (see the cover image ‘The Pink Diamond’). Thankfully, and true to life, Asibong doesn’t offer any easy answers to the riddles of identity and belonging he poses, and in the end the reader must decide where to draw the lines. Mameluke Bath is a welcome edition to the canon of dystopian works from an edgy and unconventional new author.
November 19, 2013
Book Info: Genre: Literary Fiction
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: People who like deep stories exploring dark ideas
Trigger Warnings: abuse of immigrants and minorities, (essentially) slavery, sweatshops, child abuse and neglect, murder
My Thoughts: I don't even know where to begin with this one. My rating is not about the quality of the book. This book is very well-written, almost lyrical at times. My rating is based upon the fact that this just isn't the sort of book I like. It turned out to be different from what I expected. I had hoped for a magical reality or fantasy and instead this is dark realism, very harsh, very ugly world in which asylum-seekers in England are essentially enslaved and treated like subhumans. It will probably enrage a lot of people to think of these sorts of abuses.
Another reason I didn't enjoy the book more was that I found Christie to be unbearably annoying. She has a bad attitude, a bad temper, treats everyone around her like dirt, and constantly complains about how unfair life is. The only character in this book that I didn't intensely dislike was Damon aka Diamond, and many of his sections are first-person, present-tense stream-of-consciousness, so somewhat hard to read. However, obviously the characters are well-defined and developed, because you cannot dislike someone who don't understand, right?
Also, the last two chapters of this book are the same. That is, the chapter simply repeats. I have no idea why it is like that, I assume it is some sort of error. It appears that it is the last chapter of the book, so I was able to read the whole thing; it was just weird to have that extra, duplicate chapter slapped on.
So, if this all sounds like something you would be interested in, check this book out.
Disclosure: I received an e-book ARC from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer's program in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Synopsis: Mameluke Bath is the bizarre story of Christie Smithkin, a 39-year-old misfit, misanthrope and virgin, who lives in the nightmarish English city of St Pauly.
Friendless, paranoid, and lacking the funds she needs for the completion of her PhD thesis, mixed-race Christie’s only hope lies in a new ‘asylum-seeker mentoring’ scheme for which she has recently volunteered as a mentor. Offering guidance to recently-arrived African refugees fleeing torture will, she prays, provide her with a sense of social purpose and perhaps even emotional connection.
Christie’s plan goes awry when she discovers that Mukelenge, her Congolese mentee, has already been assigned a mentor: Damon, a cheerful, vapid, white male nurse. Worse still, Mukelenge is settling into urban East Midlands society with unnerving confidence and poise. Piqued by the immigrant’s miraculous feats of integration, Christie becomes uncontrollably jealous when she realises that Mukelenge is also casting a spell of seduction over the handsome, doll-like Damon.
Christie’s determination to solve the mystery of Mukelenge’s identity, to rescue Damon from the real or imagined horrors of a zombie-factory deep in the woods, and to come to terms with her own terrifying childhood, will hurtle all three protagonists towards a macabre conclusion in the nearby spa town of Mameluke Bath.
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: People who like deep stories exploring dark ideas
Trigger Warnings: abuse of immigrants and minorities, (essentially) slavery, sweatshops, child abuse and neglect, murder
My Thoughts: I don't even know where to begin with this one. My rating is not about the quality of the book. This book is very well-written, almost lyrical at times. My rating is based upon the fact that this just isn't the sort of book I like. It turned out to be different from what I expected. I had hoped for a magical reality or fantasy and instead this is dark realism, very harsh, very ugly world in which asylum-seekers in England are essentially enslaved and treated like subhumans. It will probably enrage a lot of people to think of these sorts of abuses.
Another reason I didn't enjoy the book more was that I found Christie to be unbearably annoying. She has a bad attitude, a bad temper, treats everyone around her like dirt, and constantly complains about how unfair life is. The only character in this book that I didn't intensely dislike was Damon aka Diamond, and many of his sections are first-person, present-tense stream-of-consciousness, so somewhat hard to read. However, obviously the characters are well-defined and developed, because you cannot dislike someone who don't understand, right?
Also, the last two chapters of this book are the same. That is, the chapter simply repeats. I have no idea why it is like that, I assume it is some sort of error. It appears that it is the last chapter of the book, so I was able to read the whole thing; it was just weird to have that extra, duplicate chapter slapped on.
So, if this all sounds like something you would be interested in, check this book out.
Disclosure: I received an e-book ARC from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer's program in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Synopsis: Mameluke Bath is the bizarre story of Christie Smithkin, a 39-year-old misfit, misanthrope and virgin, who lives in the nightmarish English city of St Pauly.
Friendless, paranoid, and lacking the funds she needs for the completion of her PhD thesis, mixed-race Christie’s only hope lies in a new ‘asylum-seeker mentoring’ scheme for which she has recently volunteered as a mentor. Offering guidance to recently-arrived African refugees fleeing torture will, she prays, provide her with a sense of social purpose and perhaps even emotional connection.
Christie’s plan goes awry when she discovers that Mukelenge, her Congolese mentee, has already been assigned a mentor: Damon, a cheerful, vapid, white male nurse. Worse still, Mukelenge is settling into urban East Midlands society with unnerving confidence and poise. Piqued by the immigrant’s miraculous feats of integration, Christie becomes uncontrollably jealous when she realises that Mukelenge is also casting a spell of seduction over the handsome, doll-like Damon.
Christie’s determination to solve the mystery of Mukelenge’s identity, to rescue Damon from the real or imagined horrors of a zombie-factory deep in the woods, and to come to terms with her own terrifying childhood, will hurtle all three protagonists towards a macabre conclusion in the nearby spa town of Mameluke Bath.
March 9, 2014
I really enjoyed Mameluke Bath. The narrative is centred around Christie, the story’s antihero, and her quest to come to terms with her past and rid the world of an evil that she believes she has discovered. It starts a little disjointedly, but comes together around a third of the way through, all the time gathering pace and building to its apocalyptical climax towards the end.
As the story builds, it evoked memories in me of Roald Dahl’s The Witches, with its array of caricatured support characters barely able to hide their evil intents. At the same time, it is laced with a ghoulish black humour – in particular, the insufferably tragic Cary, who’s beautifully recounted story is so painful that it almost became funny, could have been lifted right out of Voltaire’s Candide.
As Christie slowly unmasks the horrendous goings on around her, she is forced to come to terms with her own childhood traumas and dysfunctional family. But, as the story reaches its terrible conclusion, the reader is left questioning her sanity and judgment, in a similar way to Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, or Pinky (also a nickname used throughout Mameluke for Christie, perhaps revealing this character’s influence on the author) in Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. Asibong skilfully leaves the reader with the feeling that there may be no such thing as truth or untruth, in this story or beyond.
It’s grotesquely painted images will not make easy reading for many, but Mameluke Bath is a powerful and rewarding read - a wonderful debut from Asibong.
As the story builds, it evoked memories in me of Roald Dahl’s The Witches, with its array of caricatured support characters barely able to hide their evil intents. At the same time, it is laced with a ghoulish black humour – in particular, the insufferably tragic Cary, who’s beautifully recounted story is so painful that it almost became funny, could have been lifted right out of Voltaire’s Candide.
As Christie slowly unmasks the horrendous goings on around her, she is forced to come to terms with her own childhood traumas and dysfunctional family. But, as the story reaches its terrible conclusion, the reader is left questioning her sanity and judgment, in a similar way to Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, or Pinky (also a nickname used throughout Mameluke for Christie, perhaps revealing this character’s influence on the author) in Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. Asibong skilfully leaves the reader with the feeling that there may be no such thing as truth or untruth, in this story or beyond.
It’s grotesquely painted images will not make easy reading for many, but Mameluke Bath is a powerful and rewarding read - a wonderful debut from Asibong.
April 7, 2014
Reading Mameluke Bath has been a great journey, throughout which I’ve laughed out loud and felt tenderness, outrage, love, hope and despair. Mameluke Bath’s intricate story is a very engaging reading. Its plot, which could perfectly be seen as an adaptation of one of Franz Fanon’s worst nightmares, is intriguing, eye-opening, disturbing, comic and beautiful at the same time.
Underlying the narrative there is also a challenging and refreshing political critique. This is found in the way the book exposes the very shocking but also very ordinary situations black or mix-race people, gay people, migrants, and women find themselves in as a result of living in a racist, sexist, homophobic capitalist society. The book reflects in all its crudity, and some times violence, power relations across gender, race, class, sexuality and age.
The richness of Mameluke Bath lies in that it has multiple layers. At one level it is a fascinating story with unique characters, impossible not to feel attached to or disgusted by. At another much deeper level, Mameluke Bath is a metaphor for some deep and complex issues all of us experience, in our different identities and roles, and which make us potential zombies, survivors, life regenerators, or blood-sucking lice. The cultural and academic references throughout the book from English pop-culture to Fela Kuti, Giorgio Agamben and Pedro Calderón de la Barca add another interesting layer of depth and complexity to the narrative. Definitely an excellent thought and sense-provoking read.
Underlying the narrative there is also a challenging and refreshing political critique. This is found in the way the book exposes the very shocking but also very ordinary situations black or mix-race people, gay people, migrants, and women find themselves in as a result of living in a racist, sexist, homophobic capitalist society. The book reflects in all its crudity, and some times violence, power relations across gender, race, class, sexuality and age.
The richness of Mameluke Bath lies in that it has multiple layers. At one level it is a fascinating story with unique characters, impossible not to feel attached to or disgusted by. At another much deeper level, Mameluke Bath is a metaphor for some deep and complex issues all of us experience, in our different identities and roles, and which make us potential zombies, survivors, life regenerators, or blood-sucking lice. The cultural and academic references throughout the book from English pop-culture to Fela Kuti, Giorgio Agamben and Pedro Calderón de la Barca add another interesting layer of depth and complexity to the narrative. Definitely an excellent thought and sense-provoking read.
September 21, 2013
One of the major strength of this book is its construction. I am amazed by the fact that this young writer's first novel is so brilliantly organised. As s/he progresses into the book, the reader understands little by little the connection between the two main characters (Christie and Damon) and the mysteries of their past. And then, the end surprises us, sheding a new light on the story we've just read and providing a totally different interpretation of it.
The book is rich with numerous references to music, literature, popular culture, politics, etc. One may not get or understand all those references, but that doesn't disturb the pleasure of reading. (I'm sorry if this is badly phrased, English is not my first language.) But all those references are not only there for the reader's pleasure (although it does contribute to it), they also enrich and complicate (in a good way) a fictional universe that is both fantastic in its aesthetics, and so gloomily realistic (even pessimistic) in the political statement that it constitues.
Not always easy to read (there are some harsh scenes), but that's the way it should be; the reader has to be uncomfortable at times, because there's an uncomforting truth that needs to be told.
I look forward to read more from Andrew Asibong.
The book is rich with numerous references to music, literature, popular culture, politics, etc. One may not get or understand all those references, but that doesn't disturb the pleasure of reading. (I'm sorry if this is badly phrased, English is not my first language.) But all those references are not only there for the reader's pleasure (although it does contribute to it), they also enrich and complicate (in a good way) a fictional universe that is both fantastic in its aesthetics, and so gloomily realistic (even pessimistic) in the political statement that it constitues.
Not always easy to read (there are some harsh scenes), but that's the way it should be; the reader has to be uncomfortable at times, because there's an uncomforting truth that needs to be told.
I look forward to read more from Andrew Asibong.
October 2, 2013
The author writes shows great attention to detail and the scenes described wonderfully. Andrew Asibong is creative and I like the style of his writing. I read the book more than once and I found it very difficult to follow the story. I'm still not really sure what happened. It may be my fault because I missed something. In that case the fault may be my own. It is a book worth reading.
I received this book for free in exchange for this honest review.
I received this book for free in exchange for this honest review.
September 10, 2013
This is a beautifully written and highly original piece of fiction. As I read the book I felt transported into a vivid through the looking glass type of experience. It is a very funny political allegory, and not for the faint-hearted. Very-strong feelings are explored here by the author. If you want to read an innovative, entertaining and politically radical novel, I recommend Mameluke Bath!
December 15, 2013
This is a weird and wonderful book. It took a bit of getting into but is packed full of interesting ideas and clever writing as well as having an engrossing plot. It is disturbing in parts because of the strong images created but it also has moments of humour and gentleness.
December 15, 2013
Mameluke Bath is a dystopian novel filled with a very dark humour that made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion. But it is also packed with knowing cultural references and a rich vocabulary, along with so many themes, of identity (race, gender, sexuality and more) and belonging, such that there was never a page where my mind wandered on to matters unrelated to the book itself. (In fact there were many, many times when the book prompted me to reflect considerably on my own life - like having an extended therapy session.)
I only read the book because I found out the author lives in my local area, and because it's his first-time novel - but I am so glad I did.
If you're a Will Self fan, or someone who likes to come away from a book with something more than just a neatly tied up plot, then give it a go.
I only read the book because I found out the author lives in my local area, and because it's his first-time novel - but I am so glad I did.
If you're a Will Self fan, or someone who likes to come away from a book with something more than just a neatly tied up plot, then give it a go.
July 2, 2016
I read this book when it first came out. Roughly three years later it is still with me. This book contains damaged characters in a damaged and damaging Britain, all of whom are both hideous and beautiful. Sometimes fantastical in narrative, the book gets to something very real about how combined familial, social and political trauma affects us. Central themes are 'race', immigration, gender and sexuality. Mameluke Bath seems particularly relevant in 2016.
January 7, 2015
This book is impossible to describe. Asibong throws so many elements into this novella, that it is tough to read in spots, but his willingness to experiment keeps this form being a 1 star read. It especially took awhile to get used to the second person chapters. Plus, some of the ideas seemed too British for me to fully comprehend.
May 26, 2016
Mameluke Bath is the most realistic book I have read in ages. I laughed so much, with relief that someone had finally captured the mess that's going on all around us and in my head, and made some kind of hilarious monstrous almost sense out of it. I can't wait to see whatever comes next from this author.
March 26, 2021
A lot about this book deeply resonated with me, but I’m so fascinated with the writer’s uncanny prediction of the post Brexit Britain we find ourselves in right now! !!!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews