I sobbed myself upright and looked for a message on my phone that wasn't there, seeing only a bedraggled dead flower dropped from a garland days before in the drain, and my reeking jeans and hearing the roar of wind and the rolling of orchestral drums like the cars rushing past.
Pete’s got good times. Good people. Good tunes. Good drugs. He’s got problems, too. The money is coming to the estate, and when the money comes in, the locals will have to get out, unless they can muster an impossible fight. But Pete’s got secrets; unrequited and dangerous lusts, and as austerity and gentrification start to tear terrible chunks out of life, the whole façade might come tumbling down, as the scaffolding goes up the towers.
Richie Demox’ debut full-length novel is as heartrending as it is hip, capturing perfectly the moment between hope and despair, youth and age, bohemia and desperate poverty.
writes hip-hop poetry and electronica prose. Little books of music, love, and loss. We call them XrossinKodes, because they spill across boundaries.
Influenced by a wide range of writers, from Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath and JG Ballard to Ben Okri, Irvine Welsh and Carmen Maria Machado, themes of race, sexuality, hedonism and the loss of youth emerge strongly from Demox' work. These collections of prose and poetry take in the small, complex pieces of life with a compassionate eye, whilst all the while dancing to a more dreamy, meditative state.
I finished this book yesterday (July 2022)and I felt like I had to write a review, hoping that more people get to read this book! I got hooked up from the beginning, the characters are very captivating. It is a story of a beautiful friendship on a London estate, with big ups and deep downs, as life is. Actually, it's way more than a story of a friendship - it's about life, relationships, the feeling of not belonging, riots, gentrification, love, drugs, addiction, music, happiness and unhappiness. It gets emotional, it gets dark, it gets philosophical, it gets you reflecting upon life. At some point I was reading this book in tears. What a good read, thanks Richie Demox!
I loved and hated writing this book, but what is done is done! I think about the characters a lot and the poetry that emerges as their lives unravel. I think I miss them, I enjoyed spending their lifetimes with them.