Derek Owusu is a poet whose simultaneously searing and experimental debut novel “That Reminds Me” was the deserved winner of the 2020 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut fiction (a prize he judged this year picking an excellent shortlist and outstanding winner in “Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies”). I said in my review of that novel: “the book is written in a series of .. short verses, told in a mixture of present and past tense, each representing a fragmentary and impressionistic memory, necessarily distorted through the acts of remembering and forgetting. These can on a first and even second read (on finishing the book I went back and immediately read it a second time) seem jumbled and confusing, but they accumulate to a picture of [the protagnoist] who [they are], what [they have] become, what [they believe] about [themselves] and the formative experiences and traumas that have lead to that position” and that reminds me (sic) of this equally experimental and equally impactful novel also. The novel is in effect an imagined family biography of the story of Owusu’s Mum, an attempt to understand her life and her journey from her arrival in the UK (from Ghana) up to the present day. An epilogue contains the 2019 transcript of what Owusu calls a “factless interview”, a rather fruitless attempt to “give me everything I needed to write and understand my mother’s story” which falters in the face of his mother’s vague or deliberately evasive answers. It is written in 60 short (sometimes very short) chapters, arranged in three sections - Landing, Disembarking, Customs and Immigration. Mainly written from the viewpoint of his mother, but with other voices including his own in the main narrative. As with his previous novel the style is fragmentary and impressionistic, and the reader’s (or at least this reader’s) understanding accumulative rather than immediate as we see something of his mother’s experience of: her flight and arrival, London (living in a bedsit in the Tottenham area), work (in various cleaning jobs), relationships (including two marriages), motherhood (a son and a daughter), church (Charismatic) and English society as well as her memories of her childhood in Ghana and her experience of exile from her original home. The chapters are in a mix of English and untranslated Twi – the English itself often a part translation of Twi (an afterword says “The languages spoken by the protagonist are English and Twi. These translations are approximations and a lot of their meaning and changing connotations may be lost”). Untranslated Two words are typically followed by a footnote indicator, with the footnotes (sometimes but not always related) allowing the direct voice of the son as he sets out his own memories of his mother, her behaviour, attitudes, fears and strengths. Another great novel from one of the best literary talents around. I would hope to see this on the Goldsmith’s shortlist next year and would love to see it on the Booker longlist also.

I'm not familiar with this author or his work but was intrigued by the premise of the book (and the cover). To begin with I struggled with the style feeling it was very disjointed, and the contemporary notes at the end of some of the sections made it feel even less of a whole. However, I realised after a while that the vignettes really worked and I knew and understood a lot more about Osuwu's mother's journey through life than I expected. With this in mind I went back to the beginning and started again, allowing the lyrical prose to permeate my reading at it's own pace- and I loved it! Thank you to netgalley and canongate for an advance copy of this book.