Lessons in Love and Other Crimes

by Elizabeth Chakrabarty

‘One of the most gripping and powerful books I’ve ever read; I feel so represented as a queer, brown woman.’ —  Nikita Gill An innovative hybrid of auto-fiction, crime fiction and critical race memoir, this multi-layered yet compulsively readable novel is inspired by the author´s real and extended experience of serious racial harassment, as well as exploring her search for justice and for love < **Shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2022**
**Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2022** Tesya has reasons to feel hopeful after leaving her last job, where she was subjected to a series of anonymous hate crimes. Now she is back home in London to start a new lecturing position, and has begun an exciting, if tumultuous, love affair with the enigmatic Holly. But this idyllic new start quickly sours. Tesya finds herself victimized again at work by an unknown assailant, who subjects her to an insidious, sustained race hate crime. As her paranoia mounts, Tesya finds herself yearning for the most elemental of love, acceptance, and sanctuary. Her assailant, meanwhile, is recording his manifesto and plotting his next steps. Inspired by the author’s personal experiences of hate crime and bookended with essays which contextualize the story within a lifetime of microaggressions, Lessons in Love and Other Crimes is a heartbreaking, hopeful, and compulsively readable novel about the most quotidian of crimes. ‘A story you won’t be able to get out of your head.’ —  Cosmopolitan

Genres: Fiction, Race, Crime

272 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2021

Reviews

[Andrew Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dictionary definition of racism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalised.

This book, is written by an academic and interdisciplinary artist who explores themes of race, gender and sexuality. It’s a mix of her own musings, as a person of mixed race who was brought up and has subsequently lived and worked in England, and a fictionalised story about a woman who is victimised by a racist predator. In fact there is also a third element here: the assailants ‘manifesto’, his plan and his rationale which is revealed in sections between each chapter. Elizabeth Chakrabarty explains that though the story itself is pure fiction, all of the acts visited upon the victim are drawn from her own personal experiences.

Tesya lives in London and has been pursuing an academic career at a number of universities – she’s about to start a new job at her third establishment – but each time thus far she’s run into problems. Perhaps this time it’ll be different. And not only does she have a new job but a new lover too. The mysterious Holly has arrived in her life, a red haired mother of school-age children. Holly’s husband sadly died and this seems to be her first same-sex relationship. It’s a juggling act for Tesya, she doesn’t see Holly as much as she’d like but she’s also going to be struggling with the demands of bedding in the new job and balancing the desire to spend time with best friend Jazz and others she’s close to.

Holly is clearly something of an enigma, she appears fleetingly and is then absent for extended periods, difficult to contact and sometimes evasive. But at least Jazz provides constant support. But then problems at new university start to arise. Small things start happening, somewhat innocuous if reviewed individually but Tesya sees a pattern – she’s been here before. She complains to the powers that be but though she’s not exactly fobbed off it’s clear that others don’t see these acts in quite the same light. But Tesya is convinced: someone is carrying out a series of racially driven actions, possibly with the intent of driving her out of the university.

It’s at this point that I started to check my own reaction to what’s happening here. I live in a county with just about the least diverse population in the country: according to the most recent count my district is 98.4% white. So I simply haven’t come across a lot race related crime in my everyday life. To my eyes the acts against Tesya are indirect and somewhat petty and yet I can also see how they might suggest a targeted series of attacks, particularly to someone with a keen eye for such things.

As the story continued to play out I became interested in the mystery of who was targeting Tesya but more particularly in the conundrum of her relationship with Holly – this just felt ‘off’ in so many ways. But the inclusion of author’s notes, which cropped up from time to time, and particularly the ongoing manifesto updates kept drawing me back to the central theme here, that of the racial crimes that were being committed. I started to perceive, perhaps more accurately, just how it might feel to be someone from an ethnic minority group living in this country.

Probably my only feeling of unease here was introduced by the author when she talked about hearing some people say that the voice of a well known black female politician ‘grates’ on them. EC jumps on this and calls it out as misogynoir. Really, hatred of women and people of colour too? I found that a bit of a leap - I personally find that the voices of many politicians grate on me, regardless of their sex or colour.

Overall I found this to be an interesting mix of thought provoking opinions mixed with accounts of real life experiences and augmented with a pretty decent fictionalised story. In many ways it’s an unhappy tale, one of a life spent looking over your shoulder, fearing the next assault. I’ll need to assimilate my thoughts on this further as I continue to absorb the messages herein, but it’s definitely got me thinking.

My thanks to The Indigo Press for providing an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lessons in Love and Other Crimes is a riveting, thought-provoking and profoundly moving piece of autofiction portraying Chakrabarty’s experiences of both veiled and overt racism through the medium of a fictional character. It is a hybrid of auto-fiction, crime fiction and critical race memoir. The novel is inspired by Chakrabarty’s own experiences with racial harassment as well as her search for justice and love. The author is both an academic and an interdisciplinary artist using creative critical writing, as well as performance, to explore themes of race, gender and sexuality. Using her own experiences in Britain she weaves a compulsively readable fictional narrative interspersed with incidents she was subjected to frequently. The third-person perspective allows those who have suffered trauma to write about it more easily as it places a distance between themselves and said events.

The introduction explores her experiences at school from discovering her coat has been defaced by racist language written in black marker to the Maths tutor who acted seemingly prejudicial by ordering her 100% exam result to be remarked. To her peers and friends who often mentioned her Asian appearance to her time at University in London, where she studied Drama and English, when she decided to audition for a Chekov play and was told they couldn't give her the part because she didn't ”look right”. It talks of her mother’s despair at the way her daughter is being treated and the toll it takes on both Elizabeth and her mother's mental health. She has issues getting jobs despite having all the qualifications and the interview going smoothly. But nothing could prepare her for the hell about to be unleashed in her (long-awaited) new position.

We meet our protagonist, Tesya, as she's embarking on a job as an academic at the Faculty of Arts located at an unnamed university. She grew up in a care home and longs for love and acceptance. The narrative is based on real-life experiences embellished with a fictional narrative exploring race, class, sexuality, love, loss and fear. Touching on her new role in her workplace, her relationship with single mother Holly, her mother Zehra, who fostered her at the age of fifteen, her friend ex-military turned comprehensive school PE teacher, Jazz, who is always there for her and whom she met many years ago at the children’s home; the type of friend we all need. Following the extreme harassment, we journey through Tesya’s life alongside her and are introduced, at the beginning of each chapter, to the anonymous assailant's manifesto; the person behind the insidious and odious incidents that happen routinely, especially on a Monday. Chakrabarty also touches on the intersectionality of gender and racism, which she calls misogynoir, and the novel is packed with a plethora of acute observations.

This is an important, topical and beautifully written book with so much power overflowing from its pages and somehow Chakrabarty makes a tale filled with disturbing and disgusting direct and indirect racism not only eminently readable but difficult to put down. I intended on just reading a few pages to get an idea of the story and was still awake at daybreak, so that should tell you all you need to know. I'd like to think that both institutionalised racism and personal attacks have become less ubiquitous and that we have evolved as time has gone on, but I'm a staunch realist and sadly still see racism everywhere. As Chakrabarty says - it isn't that we have become less racist; we have become better at masking it. Ethnic minorities have become a tick box assignment where companies and institutions carry out formalities using quotas and suchlike but that does not mean we have become more tolerant, merely more aware.

As a white woman and an egalitarian, I cannot profess to understand how it feels to be targeted and subjected to hate crime due to skin colour, but I do absolutely and wholeheartedly stand beside those fighting to be treated fairly and suffering through personal attacks and micro-aggressions daily. As a society, we now give the impression that everyone is treated equally and that everyone has a right not to be discriminated against but these are merely words, and it's people’s mindsets and ingrained behaviours we need to change. As the author states: fiction is "a means to explore the machinery, machinations and impact of racism, and focus away from the specifics of my individual experience”. Filled with emotion and nuance, she touches on Brexit and how ”it's no longer straightforwardly about the left and right, but between multiculturalism and nationalism, economic logic and racist paranoia". I couldn't have said it better myself.

This changing zeitgeist led to increasing xenophobia and rising white supremacist attitudes with "go back home" graffiti and posters taped to windows; an ubiquitous sight regardless of the area in which you live. The demagoguery, press hate and propaganda added fuel to the fire and resulted in the exponential rise in day to day hate crimes on ethnic minorities and is something that we should all, regardless of colour, care about. In many ways, it feels strange to say I enjoyed reading a book based on the author's horrific experiences of racism in a country that apparently prides itself on being accepting of everyone, but I did. It's a scintillating, beguiling and eye-opening read and without a doubt my favourite book of 2021. If you only read one book this year then make it this one. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists.

Overall I felt this was a very distinctive and also vitally important book one perhaps best described by the author herself in an epilogue

Writing through and out the other side of what happened to me, my growing aim was to explore the relationship between racism in childhood and adult life, which is why this hybrid novel is constructed from a critical race memoir of growing up British despite racism, and through fiction inspired as an adult trying to love while living through hate crime.

The book opens with the memoir - a 15 page “Autobiography of Love and Racism” in which the author sets out her life via a series of 13 incidents when she encountered direct and indirect racism through infancy, primary and secondary school, university, and then work in the creative industries and academia – culminating in an appointment in what looks like an exciting new job in academia outside of London, one where we are told the racism reaches a new depth.

The second chapter is effectively a link between the memoir and the novel – headed “Digression; How to Write About the Trauma of Racism” the author, newly back in London after being the victim of racist hate crime openly explores how best to write about what happened to her, setting on the idea to use “only the specifics of the racist crime I experienced, and explore the theme of racist crime in a genre-fiction way ….. [while also trying to] use the theme of hate despite love to counter the crime plot” a novel with “ethnic minority characters in the foreground”, a “white love interest” and a white “faceless aggressor”.

Apart from the epilogue, the remainder of the book is the 200+ page novel – but while having some of the elements of genre (suspense/terror, mystery and detection, relationship(s) ambiguity and development, police procedural etc.) even this part is far from a conventional novel.

The basic plot is about a mixed race, British, academic and care-leaver Tesya. She left a rather underwhelming position at a “Golden Spires” University for a new position at New Build University in the countryside north of London where she was the subject of a sustained series of psychological racial harassments (curry paste on doorposts, mutilated photos, name card defacement and removal).

Now she is back in London in a redbrick University and is in a lesbian relationship with Holly. Holly is white and is newly widowed (or separated) and not yet willing to come out to her friends or children so their relationship is rather clandestine and dictated almost at whim by Holly’s availability – often causing Tesya to take refuge in her almost lifelong friendship with her black ex-military PE sporty friend Jazz, or the safety of her last foster mother Zehra’s home. Over time Tesya starts to sense the same pattern of racist incidents starting to re-emerge Now, while at the same time revisiting what happened Then with her police case officer.

The chapters as well as switching between sections Then and Now – also contain Author’s Notes (often as she comments on how something Tesya feels or experiences relates to her own life) and most daringly sections written from the viewpoint of Tesya’s unnamed white antagonist written in the form of a series of videod lectures into how to carry out racial attacks and about the power dynamics and psychology involved (particularly when the victim is a woman and the attack is motivated by what the author cleverly labels “misogynoir”).

The Epilogue then explains the narrative and genre choices that the author made – some of which relate to her using the fiction to give some closure to the past and hope for the future that she still has not experienced in reality.

Overall I thought this was an excellent book.

The choice of using a fictional device but grounding the specifics of the racist crime in the author’s lived reality seems to work really well.

The fictional setting gives the book (at least to me as a fiction reader) more emotional/empathetic impact than a pure memoir/autobiography and the often very well intentioned but ultimately unhelpful white colleagues around Tesya challenged me with how I would react – or possibly have reacted - in similar circumstances in my own workplace;

The real life underpinning means that the reader cannot dismiss the most disturbing elements as far-fetched or exaggerated; the Author’s notes on how she experienced equally makes it impossible for the reader to attempt to explain away their impact (note that non-victims/non-perpetrators dismissing/explaining away the experiences of victims is a key theme of the book);

And the techniques used by the aggressor and the way he extrapolates them from more day-to-day micro-aggressions (some of which can be positioned by the instigator as simply power politics) can make for very challenging reading for a white, male reader.

Overall highly recommended.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I both liked and disliked the complexity of this book. Chakrabarty is upfront about the extent to which this is based on true and actual incidents of racial harassment, insult and threat suffered by her in various academic workplaces and she thinks intelligently about how to tell the story partly through deconstructing the fictional elements. All the same, I think that personally I'd have preferred this if it had been just memoire: at points it feels a little like crucial points are getting lost in the fictional carapace - and this is so important, so self-knowing and intelligent that it deserves every breath of clarity and transparency that can be brought to bear on a story that many, many people will recognise and share.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There are truths hovering closer, in the gap between fiction and real life"

I read this book because of its inclusion on the long list for the Desmond Elliott Prize, a prize awarded to "A debut full-length novel written in English".

And this is a thought-provoking and intelligent debut novel. It sits well alongside one of its companions on the long list, Natasha Brown’s Assembly. It’s not necessarily a simple book to read. After an introductory essay introduces us to the idea that the book is going to be a way for the author to explore racism by writing a fictional version of events that actually happened to her, we then head off into a narrative that follows four distinct threads. Two of these ("Now" and "Then") tell us the story of Tesya. Or, more accurately, two stories about Tesya one a job in the past and one her current employment. Gradually the two merge. Both concern racist acts. These two fictional story threads are interspersed with Author’s Notes where Chakrabarty explains the rational for what we have just read or are about to read. This makes reading this book an unusual experience: normally when reading fiction the reader (well, this is my way) suspends disbelief and tries to enter the world the author creates as though it were real. Here, we are always aware because of the author’s interjections, that the narrative is serving a purpose and is fictional. Somehow, though, this did not seem to stop this reader feeling for Tesya - it doesn’t matter how often Chakrabarty tells you she is made up, you can’t help siding with her. The fourth strand of the novel is a series of "lessons" prepared by Tesya’s antagonist about how to be an antagonist in this kind of story - these represent Chakrabarty’s attempts to understand what motivates racism and racist acts.

This combination of crime fiction, auto-fiction and memoir makes for an unusual and stimulating reading experience.

I don’t want to say much about "Now" and "Then" because I think it’s best to read the story and uncover the developing plot for yourself. What works well alongside this fictionalised version of Chakrabarty’s own experiences is the combination of author’s notes and antagonist’s "lessons" which gradually explore both institutional racism and personal attacks (direct and indirect). As a white male, it can be difficult to understand what it feels like to be treated differently (and hatefully) due to the colour of my skin. And what I find scary is how easy it is to do what several people in this book try to do which is to minimise it, to explain it away.

If you are like me and rarely read genre fiction, you might find yourself cringing a bit at the ending of the main story. But don’t judge too quickly. Yes, it is, as the author herself says, a "genre ending", but read the author’s note that follows it.

As a final note, another book I read recently that explores similar issues but from a non-fiction point of view is "The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred" by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. All three of Lessons..., Assembly and Disordered... are well worth your time to read.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's always a pause. The other person looks away, then remembers something on an unrelated matter. Moving safely on to another topic, we avoid the conflict of me naming what it's really about, misogynoir: their inability to see a woman of colour in that position.

Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, Elizabeth Chakrabarty's Lessons in Love and Other Crimes begins with a twist on the usual novel disclaimer that sets the tone for this hybrid novel, which blends genre fiction with a more essayistic approach of a critical race memoir.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This novel is work of fiction. The characters and places within it are products of imagination, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. However, all the examples of hate crime and acts of day today racism portrayed in this number have happened to the author.

The main novel, around which the meta-fiction is woven, is the story of Tesya, a lecturer who recently moved university from rural East England to London after she was the victim of a workplace hate crime, a sustained (but from the university's perspective, covert) campaign of racial harassment. Now she is trying to rebuild her life and develop a relationship with a woman she met on the internet, but who is rather secretive about her own home life.

This part of the novel is well-written, with a powerful portrayal of the insidious effects of racism and microagressions as well as hate crimes, and at the same time hopeful in its portrayal of loving character, alongside a deliberately very British backdrop. However it deliberately followa certain genre conventions, with a ridiculous dénouement that is simulateneously shocking and a 'happy ending' wrapped in one.

A second strand of the book is told from the perspective of the abuser, in the form of a manual of Lessons in Love and Other Crimes, essentially a how-to guide for stalkers and covert haters everywhere. This perhaps was the least successful part of the novel for me, a little contrived, and Chakrabarty took the decision to make her antagonist not overtly racist in his thoughts: this helps makes her point that many racists, particularly priviliged people, people in the professions, are good at hiding what they are, even from themselves, but did mean this part felt less connected with the main story.

But for me the third strand elevated the overall novel, the author's own interjections on her own experience and how it relates to the novel, including the ways she has written the novel to deliberately have a different, neater, outcome (such as discovering who was the criminal) and which then justifies the more genre-like elements of the story.

Impressive and a novel that really should have featured on the Booker, Women's and Goldsmiths Prizes.

Interviews with the author:
https://www.badformreview.com/read/ijsaz
https://www.wasafiri.org/article/on-e...

[Angélique ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay so reading this for my lit class, here are a few of my thoughts:
Whilst I understand where the author is coming from, I think the ending would have made more sense and should have been more interesting had we not know who actually did it. This would have made the story more realistic and in my humble opinion seemed like the right ending.
The never ending thinking: ‘do they love each other’ is something I will keep on thinking about
…
Overall I did enjoy reading the book, definitely reread worthy:)

[Ellie Hegarty · Rating 1 out of 5]

Enjoyed the experimental style and study of micro and macro aggressions of racism in the UK, but the characters are all quite bland and faceless - didn't really learn about any of their motivations. The ending comes out of nowhere and feels a bit ridiculous, and is a disappointing read overall.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a thought-provoking blend of fiction mixed with accounts of real life hate crimes experienced by the author. I thought the use of Author’s Notes throughout the novel provided a unique insight into the author’s motivations behind her fictional choices. I just wish the conclusion was explored further, as I felt I still had unanswered questions at the end. An important and eye-opening read - 4.5 stars :)

[Olivia Atkinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting read with some meaningful discussion of identity and bias in the workplace/academia. A great lesson in not to accept less than what you deserve. I just felt like the ending was a bit abrupt?

[Carmijn Gerritsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This thought-provoking novel combines the personal with the political as the crime genre is interwoven with characteristics of literary fiction. The author notably reflects on her writing in the final epilogue, highlighting the interplay between the fictional and the real as well as the politics of academia in light of racial discrimination in the socio-political context of Britain. Though the crime element was not entirely convincing to me, I found the experimental reflection on political matters very striking.

[Gemma W · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a little apprehensive about starting this, as the style felt very experimental, but I was tempted because it was listed for the Desmond Elliot prize this year and the other books I have sampled off that list this year have been really good.

It did not disappoint, I ended up being hooked and reading it over an afternoon. It’s a book within a book, so the story of a person writing the account of a trauma that happened to them but having to twist it into a fiction with the structure that requires; a clear protagonist, an antagonist, a conclusion.

Some bits of the book worked better for me than others. The narrative is split between the actual author, the protagonists view of “Then” and “Now”, and the antagonist’s manifesto. It took me about a hundred pages to get straight in my head who was talking at a given moment, especially as the “then” and “now” scenarios were similar in feel both about a series of micro and not so micro racial aggressions, but also because to complicate matters somethings the story of “then” was actually told in the “now” sections as part of the dialogue or thought process. It fell into place for me as the novel progressed, although I can imagine it putting people off in the start. I also found the manifesto of her antagonist, a little weird. Essentially, he was a straight up sociopath. I sort of understand that the author was trying to show that people perpetrating these things are not straight up racists in the way we think of them, but it also felt a little abstract / Horror film bad guy. I guess this was also deliberate as the author in the book was talking about fictionalising her ordeal, but I have to admit I ended up skimming some of those parts.

I then very much enjoyed the way the book finishes with the contrast between the shocking/ happy nevertheless clean ending of the fictionalised version versus the unresolved and unsatisfying lack of conclusion to her own real life experience.

Overall a really fun reading experience.

[LindaJ^ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because it is one of the 10 books on the longlists for the 2022 Desmond Elliot Prize for a debut novel. It was a 4+ star read.

This novel is somewhat experimental, mixing auto-fiction and memoir with crime. It works quite well. The author starts with a few pages of memoir, telling the reader about her own experiences with racist acts and non-actions through her childhood, university years, and, at a higher level, during two jobs. She uses the novel to help her work through her experiences, especially in her jobs. As the fictional crime story moves forward, the author included occasional "author notes," explaining decisions she made about the novel. The other piece of the novel is composed of the "lessons," provided by the racist, misogynist tormentor, on how to torment a person.

The crime novel is enjoyable - Tesya is the primary character. She is well-supported by best friend Jazz, as well as foster mother Zehra and one of her foster-brothers. As the story begins, Tesya believes she is in love with a white woman - Holly - who she met in an online dating service. Holly though is less open than Tesya and has children. Holly may not be quite real. While Tesya and Jazz were characters I came to want the best for, Holly made me suspicious from the beginning.

The author's notes made the reading interesting. I loved learning about the choices she made. The tormentor's lessons were terrifying.

Enjoyed this one a lot and will be keeping my eyes open for more by this author.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lessons in Love is a thought provoking novel using creative and critical writing to explore themes of race, gender and sexuality.

In the introduction, Chakrabarty presents her own experiences of both love and racism, and then explores how to write about the trauma of racism giving the reader a good starting point for the story.

Then we meet our protagonist, Tesya who starts her new job as a lecturer, excited to start anew after being subjected to hate crimes in her previous role. However, her hope is cut short when she is being victimised again in work by an unknown person. Here Chakrabarty cleverly provides the reader with the narrative of Tesya’s previous job then her current role, which sadly merge into the same narrative representing the repetition of the microaggressions and hates crimes within the work place.

Tesya also have a love affair with Holly, a mother-of-two who has yet to come to terms with her own sexuality and with the affair very much on Holly’s terms.

This beautifully written novel is inspired by Chakrabarty’s personal experiences of hate crimes and though as a white woman I have not experienced racism, I have experience the microaggressions within the patriarchy, making this novel very relatable from my own perspective.

Chakrabarty offers a captivating, eye-opening book, which I cannot stop thinking about and would highly recommend it to everyone.

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“All of the evil in the world is contained within the human frame.” Elizabeth Chakrabarty’s forthcoming novel Lessons in Love and Other Crimes, due to be published next week by Indigo Press, is a clever and engaging take on familiar issues: racism, hate, misogynoir. Set in the context of academia, Chakrabarty overtly and boldly draws on experiences of her own life, including an unsettling series of racially motivated aggressions, all perpetrated by an unknown offender. While the crimes remain unsolved for Chakrabarty, she writes through the manifold lenses of genre fiction to create a story more satisfying, more hopeful, and undeniably, horribly thrilling — handling such difficult themes, Chakrabarty’s story is so stark that no reader could turn away, like so many of us turn away from or dismiss issues that do not directly affect us. Formally, this novel is so refreshing, shifting between two timelines, and two perspectives within them, presenting one of those perspectives as these strange addresses that start to unravel, while then also interrupting the overarching narrative with frequent author’s notes — this, alongside two introductions and an epilogue, constantly framing and reframing events for the reader and writer both. Chakrabarty expresses the influence of The Handmaid’s Tale and 1984, from an ideological/craft perspective — this novel fits in with its antecedents quite nicely.

[Flo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thought provoking and interesting read. Scary to think that some of the incidents were based on the author’s real experiences and it opened my eyes to the level of embedded racism in the UK. I was certainly hooked on the story, although I found the narrative hard to follow at times. The ending was quite sudden which I didn’t love and sometimes I think I prefer the theme of the novel to be intertwined within the story without such explicit explanations. I think overall the themes of the novel were explored in-depth and in that sense it was a good read, however the fictional narrative is where I found drawbacks, but I’m aware that the story was a way to show the author’s experiences in a different light.

[melina · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extremely well written novel, with an in depth analysis of the main character and great attention to detail. Definitely allowed me to really think about just how different it is for WOC in this world, especially in very white centric workplaces, and the continuous racial harassment they face.

Unfortunately I did have to skip a few chapters just because it was so slow and repetitive. I dont need to hear every internal monologue on existing in this world every time you spot some rubbish or a leaf or a family. A few times is fine, but not every second paragraph.

Other than that I loved the ending, and I loved the interactions between all the characters.

[Francesca Ryder · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the way it was laid out, each chapter starting with a lesson that truly made you think about the character’s situation but also applying it to yourself as a person of colour. However I didn’t like the main plot enough, I thought it was pretty boring and ended so abruptly. I was also disappointed at who the culprit of these racist attacks turned out to be - a bit predictable and the fact that he dies before we even get to know more about his motives seemed rushed and overall improbable. It was a real, believable story until then.

[₊✧Beatriz˚୨୧ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was very good and got me hooked till the very end. The message was very important and it's really sad that these main charachter's experiences are based on the author's life, books like this help spread awareness.
On the more negative note I think the ending could have been better explained there were still a lot of questions left unanswered especially regarding Holly. I also thought the timeline skips and author's notes made the novel a bit confusing at times.

[Mya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found that the author should have picked one element to add the the novels hybridity. The authors notes, lessons, then and now narrative, add up to a story that is at times hard to follow. However, the main plot was entertaining.

[Wiktoria Ali Syed · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm actually not finished reading... but I hope to never have to finish....