Skye Papers

by Jamika Ajalon

Twentysomething and restless, Skye flits between cities and stagnant relationships until she meets Scottie, a disarming and disheveled British traveler, and Pieces, an enigmatic artist living in New York. The three recognize each other as kindred spirits—Black, punk, whimsical, revolutionary—and fall in together, leading Skye on an unlikely adventure across the Atlantic. They live a glorious, subterranean existence in 1990s London: making multimedia art, throwing drug-fueled parties, and eking out a living by busking in Tube stations, until their existence is jeopardized by the rise of CCTV and policing.

In fluid and unrelenting prose, Jamika Ajalon's debut novel explores youth, poetry, and what it means to come terms with queerness. Skye Papers is an imaginative, episodic group portrait of a transatlantic art scene spearheaded by people of color—and of the fraught, dystopian reality of increasing state surveillance.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Historical Fiction, British Literature, Speculative Fiction, Adult Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published June 8, 2021

Reviews

[Sage Agee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most underrated 2021 release. Think Kazuo Ishiguro but Black and queer and set in the 90’s. I’m gonna think about this one for a long time.

[Kathie · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the heart of this queer, punk, semi-dystopic transatlantic drug-fueled tale is a psychological mystery about memory and surveillance. Someone is watching Skye, but who and why? And why are parts of her memory blocked off? What does TAMT (The All Mighty They) have to do with it?

Skye is a 20-something poet and wanderer who feels inexplicably bonded to a couple of squatting artists in New York and Brixton. But while the trio eke out a life of art-making and the illusion of freedom, it's increasingly clear that not everything is as it appears. Skye is an engaging and memorable character: a modern-day beatnik who carries around beat-up copies of "On the Road" and "Giovanni's Room". The world of the novel is atmospheric and intoxicating, the narrative is an engrossing interrogation of freedom, capitalism, and the surveillance state.

[afrobookricua · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I would just stare at the sky. For a long time, it seemed nothing happened, except in the worlds created on pages. Outside of that, I was lost” Skye, (105). ☁️👁‍🗨☁️

After closing SKYE PAPERS, I’m coming down from sort of cerebral high, an elevated out-of-body experience that has me stammering at the meaning of life, love, and the world we live in. A prolonged trance where paranoia grips you by your forearms, shaking you back to reality. The steady electronic hum of CCTV and surveillance created in the narrative provides an orther-worldy third eye scrutinizing your every move.

Points that stuck with me:

#JamikaAjalon presents such a great lens into the black experience and identity and what it means to move among folks that look like you. Are you “REAL” or “WOKE” enough to be down? — Skye: “Those of the melanin nation weren’t always allies—you could be diminished under the interrogative eye questioning your “realness” (133).

The coming into queerness was something I really enjoyed reading as well. The forceful obsession to blot out innate desires and attractions for someone that shares the same gender seems to be designed by the insecurities of selfish relationships and a religion that only serves to ostracize.

The genes passed down by biological parents are that alone. The bad decisions, relationships, or even actions of a parent ARE NOT inherited and to pigeon-hole children into this idea only results in the need to seek freedom by any means necessary. Skye is a product of that and she carelessly stumbles towards that “free” oasis, under the whirring surveillance of the third-eye, in hopes to FIND herself.

Thank you @feministpress for my uncorrected proof. SKYE PAPERS, an ‘amethyst edition’- publishes June 8, 2021. ☁️👁‍🗨

[Tabitha · Rating 4 out of 5]

"To be free of this is perhaps costlier than most of us could fathom or believe we could handle. To see things as they are, and live your truth in spite of it; to have the courage to embrace where your own pulse might lead, even and especially when everything around you presses to acquiesce to the script, to what has “always been” and ultimately to have the courage to face yourself as you are - this, I suspect, is the price of the ticket, the path to whatever freedom lives."

Being self-aware is hard as it is, but for Skye discovering herself requires also navigating the opinions and the eyes that seem to follow her through her “new self-determined life”. Skey’s story starts with her breaking free from her college-bound plans and hometown, she heads to New York and seeks out a man she barely knows and a couch she can call home until she builds her own path forward.

Yet in those first few days in New York (with her new found freedom and drive), Skye’s decisions are bordered with fuzzy edges and a reliance on people she can barely call her acquaintances, Pieces and Scottie. These two seem to inevitably become her community as she imagines a life where she follows “where her feet itch” to go next - including an immediate move from NY to London. It’s her journey in London and the fast forming relationships with both Pieces and Scottie that lead her to begin to question how she got there in the first place. With each attempt at piecing together her timeline since she arrived in New York, Skye sees the edges of each memory blur further, she begins to question the roles her friends play in her life, and she can’t shake the uneasy sensation that they are all being watched.

It’s this same uneasiness and questioning that extends into her understanding of herself. Skye leaves behind her boring relationship with her boyfriend and embraces a more fluid lifestyle of romance and art. She leans on her friend Pieces, exploring whether this friendship is in fact a crush and what that means for her own sexuality. At the same time, the absence of Pieces, someone she immediately seems anchored to and drawn to across her journey, requires Skye to reflect further on herself and understand how the strange community she’s formed contrasts with the relationships she had built in her past, including her parents. The deeper her reflection goes, the more unanswered pieces she uncovers as she seeks to understand what it means to be queer, to be independent, and to be an artist.

Skye’s artistic tendencies are poetic at its core. Skye’s poetry flows through her from the beginning of the novel as a means for her to balance unique moments and emotions with the larger thematic shifts she witnesses in the communities around her. Skye also seeks fellow poets and “conscious brown-skinned folks” as she moves from her hometown, to Chicago, to NY, and finally to London. Yet, when she begins to share her gift, the reactions and presence of others hardly matter. Her voice and strength found in the beat of her prose carry her onward:

"Except for some shy glances, I was focused on something way beyond. Midway through now. the journal found its home in my back pocket and I chanted the rest of the piece from memory. I lost myself in the all of it all. I’d gone into another realm, a place that felt as right as any right place I had ever felt and that kind of right was rare - I was exactly where I was supposed to be."

Skye’s poetry and “realness” clashes with a constant question of observation or uneasiness among her friends. As Skye leans into her artistic voice, the reader watches her life unravel through each question and emotion Skye tries to resolve on her own. While she leans on her makeshift community for support, she also sees a stark contrast between her own thoughts and those of her friends, their mentors, and the larger artistic community she longs to be a part of in London.

This same questioning and longing to be a part of something both unique and connected is what draws people back to Skye and helps Skye piece together her story and unravel the heavy weight of observation that follows her wherever she goes.

Review 4/5 ⭐️

The author’s fluidity gives way to a story built upon glimpses of time and contrasting narration between observation and Skye’s poetic interpretations. I appreciated the prose and imagery provided throughout the narration and the author’s ability to explore poetry further through Skye’s talents and descriptive verse.

While the themes of identity, queerness, and observation are poignant in this novel, I thought with the addition of a 3rd party observer/narrator that the author could’ve done more to use the supporting characters to illustrate or contrast these themes through their own experiences. The reader gets some of this through the manuscript style stage directions and observation and maybe it’s intentional to leave the reader wanting more of that by the end of the novel….

I also think the novel tries to tackle too many secondary themes, like familial dependence or influence, without offering resolution or more than one perspective. For instance - is Skye’s pursuit for truth about her mother necessary? This part of the story seems to fall out or is replaced by Skye’s new concept of “family” seen through her interactions with Scottie and Pieces.

I also wonder if the open-ended spirit of this novel requires some of these intentionally unanswered questions, writing tropes, and themes so that the writing and plot are a reflection of each other.

Although I had some trouble closing this novel with these unresolved details, there were many points where I was feverishly jotting down some of the prose in this novel. The author’s ability to articulate the challenges with adapting v. carving a new path in any society, let alone one under heavy surveillance, made the story arc easier to follow and left room for reflection as the reader learned more about Skye and her story.

[Tatum Kleis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very eccentric and somewhat confusing (especially part 3 of the book), but the writing was so good! I definitely need someone I know to read this book so I can debrief and make sense of what actually happened (as well as what the “bigger metaphor” is).

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
I liked the writing and the general feel of this, tho sometimes found it dragged a little. The ending where it explained all about the surveillance stuff was a no from me.

[Kaitlyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was weird and not my cup of tea. I don't think I would have liked it as a read, but the narration was absolutely not it for me and certainly did the book no favours (in my opinion)!

[michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

i went into this book knowing really nothing about it but the blurb i read on the inside cover. for once, i went in kinda blind, and i so wanted to love this. i do think it was a cool concept with the sci-fi elements concerning the surveillance. i liked that we didn't exactly know what was the truth/reality as ajalon sets up the beginning by giving away the ending for the most part. i got invested in the characters' stories, particularly pieces.

all that to say, i had a few issues. i think the major glaring problem with this story to me was 1. the pacing. the entire book is essentially the mundane tribulations of the lives of skye, scotty, and pieces. we follow their aimlessness and drug/alcohol binges while learning about their relationships with each other and parts of their stories. that's all good and fine but we end up on a rollercoaster speeding downhill in the last 50 pages. everything, including the hints and their meanings, is unveiled so quickly for such a drastic premise. that brings me to my issue 2. the magnitude of the cause. i think that the whole reality show on a new drug due to drug trafficking seems implausible even in a sci-fi sense. or perhaps it just felt kinda silly. the punishment did not match the crime in any way. i don't know if that mismatch was intended to be commentary on being a black person in america or not, i'm not sure. then, there's the whole gay thing with the mom and dad which was like okay that could be a rich thread to explore but is also just unloaded at the end. i think ajalon had a lot of great stories hidden in this, but it ultimately felt like too much was getting set up for no real fleshing out or satisfying conclusion really. it was ambitious but lacked the development i really needed to see to feel like it was well done. pieces ended up feeling like a stronger character to me than skye as well.

[Squash (Lex) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had so much potential that just...fell short. I could tell that it was written for an American audience but the way the reader/Skye is "taught" certain British terms and/or slang felt a bit patronizing. The characters were fleshed out and interesting and I liked them a lot but the plot crumbled quickly in the last half of the book Things sped up to a degree that felt strange and unnatural, the book's pacing was inconsistent throughout. Perhaps that was deliberate considering the reveal at the climax, but if it was, it should have been utilized better. If the inconsistent paciing wasn't deliberate, then it just made the book feel strange to read. There were moments were I felt like there should have been more fleshing out of certain character relationships. Even with the reveal at the end and the explanation of Pieces' erratic/avoidant behavior, I wish there had been more fleshing out of the relationship or friendship between her and Skye at the beginning, when Skye first arrives in London. Characters who seemed cool/interesting got glossed over and instead there was a lot more dwelling on Skye walking around or busking or just hanging out. I could have gone without the last 30 or so pages after the big reveal, where Skye went back through everything that happened with the knowledge she (and the reader) had gained. It dragged on and on and at that point I felt like the whole story was so contrived that I just wasn't interested anymore. A friend who read this book before I did said she thought it was an experimental novel that just hadn't gone far enough, and I completely agree with her. I think if the style with the film script interludes went further, into printed visuals or more weirdness with the interludes, more experimental style with the main story, or something, it would have been really good. It just didn't push hard enough.

[Emily Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skye Papers is a psychedelic, Orwellian journey about artists and society. Using mystifying prose, Jamika Ajalon crafts a world of creativity, drugs, and misfits.
On her way to her first semester at the University of Chicago, Skye meets Scottie. They share an intimate but disorienting moment on the greyhound bus. When her relationship with her boyfriend falls apart, she decides to leave Chicago and find Scottie in New York City. Her quest for Scottie leads her to Pieces. Skye finds herself enraptured with Pieces, a woman who is strong and loud in ways that Skye isn’t. Skye, Pieces, and Scottie become, as Scottie would say, the “power of three.” We follow the trio on their journey through squatting city to city and creating art in the 1990s.
Skye, a college dropout who moves across the country to live with unconventional strangers, lacks motivation and direction. She spends most of her days tripping, drinking, and wandering aimlessly. However, Skye is surprisingly articulate about what it means to be a black woman and artist. Her obsession with Pieces and her intuition about being watched tears Skye in different directions. The novel follows Skye as she discovers her sexuality and questions the emergence of surveillance.
Ajalon crafts realistic characters with a unique experience. She challenges readers to confront how acceptable it is to live a life under watch.

[Renée · Rating 3 out of 5]

The back of the book says “A portrait of young Black artists in the 1990s London underground scene whose existence is threatened by the rise of state surveillance”, and at first that intrigued me, but later as I read I realized it’s more about drugs, booze, sometimes poetry, sometimes music, and frustrating conversations between main characters. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed reading Skye Papers. However, my main problem is how most of the book is plotless. It’s only revealed at the end that this whole story is a version of The Truman Show. Its a well written book with cliché’s here and there. I thought having a few pages as scripts was clever. I sort of liked Skye and Piece’s story, but again, it wasn’t really a thing until the last couple chapters. It’s obviously set in the 90s but it got boring reading about Skye and Scottie smoking weed and drinking booze for 100 odd pages. I think it would’ve been better if more things were happening leading up to part 3. For part 2’s entirety, it was slow.

[Scott Neigh]

Literary fiction that is both historical and has a bit of a speculative element. Coming of age in the impoverished, queer, artistic fringe of the Black Atlantic in the 1990s, coupled with an unexpected look at the burgeoning surveillance culture of that era. Captures the feel of a moment that is passing, of a time when you could drop out and still scrounge together some sort of life in a world city like London, before the intensified triumph of markets and carcerality in the following decades. Has a reveal towards the end that...well, without saying too much, that re-frames some of the earlier part of the book in interesting ways. I didn't feel like it needed that, to be honest, but I didn't object. Overall, I liked it. Well written and pleasantly weird.

[Satsuma · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

Maybe I loved this for the nostalgia (90s England), or the relatability of the rise of surveillance when I was growing up. The transition from the free world to that of constantly being tracked.

Ajalon's language from beautiful poetic lines, to raw, angry spoken word perfectly encapsulates the bittersweet experience of coming of age.

I found this book to balance well between sharing enough to feel satisfied, but also leaving a lot unknown, which has left me pondering (in a good way) after I had finished reading.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you feminist press for a copy of this book

I enjoyed the premise of this book and it continued to sucked me time and time again when I considered putting it down. I found it difficult to like the characters as they often seemed to act irrationally and I wasn't really sure what the was really going on for most of the book but the mystery kept this book going for me and the ending was very satisfying and led me to forgive some of the slow aspects of the read.

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars!

Finally, a book that got me sucked in and wrapped up. I've been waiting for it! One that I actually was excited to read and actually read at night.

Great, interesting characters, great story/ journey, drugs & parties! It had all the mixings of a good tale (plus the running away from home, being a nomad, living your truth, romance and secret eyes on you).

Huge fan of the way it was written.

[Red Reece · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely different than I expected, as it's less Orwellian than the summary made it seem like it would be. I find this refreshing, however, as surveillance stories often feel very overdone, and this book felt completely new. The depiction of the characters felt authentic and I felt very connected to Skye throughout the book. I hope she finds her mother.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The atmosphere was right on for the '90 s. Somehow the bohemian alcohol and drug fuelled lifestyle without consequences was a bit of a stretch as well as the attraction to the fickle and rough around the edges 'Pieces'. London is one of the most expensive cities in the world but people get by by busking ? humm I feel like it needs a book doctor.

[Napthali · Rating 5 out of 5]

So.....First couple of pages had me wondering 'huh?'...is this a script or a book? Literally 5 pages in and I couldn't put the book down. By page 23 I was hooked!!

This is amazing stuff. Are we going to see a mini series version? Hope so!

[Denny Kus · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poetry-prose writing style like nothing I've ever experienced left rhythms playing in my head. And a story that feels so much bigger than it is and yet so much smaller and personal at the same time. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time!

[Ferris Mx · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reminiscent of Sorry To Bother You, unfortunately I did not get it. I wanted to get it. I just couldn't.

[Laura Sackton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmmm. This is a novel with an interesting structure and some interesting twists. I'm still pondering things, which is usually a sign that something worked, even if I'm not entirely sure I liked it.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gave me very strange dreams for awhile, and parts of it were really good, but the reveal felt like a letdown, and I got a bit bored of all the drinking and drugs.

[s · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will probably think about this book for a really long time… Left me speechless!

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

This one just didn't work for me. The twist at the end was just too contrived for me, and I didn't find the story compelling at all up to that point.

[Noa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25
it had so much potential...

[Webber Sloan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good writing at times but plot and structure are relatively basic

[Lesley-Ann Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! The characters, setting, plot. I love the relationships, the queerness, the 90s New York. Ajalon is no joke. Her work is stellar.