It’s 1996 and just another day in Nightingale Point, a block of flats on a London estate. Gradually we are introduced to a host of characters, starting with Malachi and his younger brother Tristan. Where Tristan is all charisma, chat and rap lyrics, studious Malachi, who has cared for Tristan since their mother died, is focused on his architecture studies – or he was until he and his first love, Pamela, were separated by her racist father. Little does he know that she’s currently being held prisoner by her father just a few floors away, desperate to tell Malachi some life-changing news.
Next door Mary, a middle-aged Filipino nurse who nurtured the boys from childhood, is troubled by ominous dreams. She is guilty about cheating on her peripatetic husband, who has been off chasing fame since they married three decades ago.
A few floors down is Elvis, one of Nightingale Point’s newest residents, a man with severe learning difficulties who has been placed there as part of a care in the community scheme. He finds comfort in lists, schedules, Fray Bentos pies and his day nurse’s long, glittering pink nails.
What appears at first to be a very good but fairly predictable narrative of London lives woven together becomes something much more powerful when an accident destroys Nightingale Point and changes the characters’ worlds for ever – an event that Luan Goldie manages to make genuinely shocking and visceral on the page.
It’s impossible to read about a tower block in flames without thinking of Grenfell, and while the author’s note says that the tragedy wasn’t her inspiration, she does dedicate the book to the Grenfell residents, and it brings the needlessness and horror of those events to life.
This is a compelling novel, one in which the humanity of the characters is movingly articulated. The exquisite eye for detail and delicate turn of phrase will linger long after you’ve raced through the pages, too. Goldie was the winner of the Costa short story award in 2017; this finely crafted, compassionate debut fulfils that promise.
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