by Joe Pemberton
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Described as a new voice in Black British Fiction, Joe Pemberton's first novel is a compelling story of childhood in the 1960s: the dreams and nightmares of a young Mancunian called James, whose family has moved to England from the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. In some ways, this is not an easy story to tell; the Preface to For Ever and Ever Amen finds the author struggling to convince James and Aunty Mary--the complexity of this spectral character is uncovered slowly, and subtly, throughout the book--of the merits of writing a novel at all: "I tell them there's no story anyway, not the way they tell it. It's all bit and pieces, just little stories one by one." This could be a description of reading Pemberton's book.
Divided into 32 short chapters, For Ever and Ever Amen provides the reader with the pieces of a complicated jigsaw. There are the conventional elements of a childhood story: the comforts and collisions of school and family, James's devotion to H.R. Puf-n-stuff, the lure of colour telly and the hints of the parents' past lives. On the other hand, "James was good at pretending" and Pemberton takes his readers into the fantasy life of a child whose family is on the move from Moss Side to Ashton-under-Lyne: "to a brand new semi-detached house with a front lawn and a garage and not another black face for miles, Dad said." That move hovers over the book, as if in anxious recall of the family's other life "back home", in the West Indies. With the help of Aunty Mary, James forges his daydreams between past and present, between Cadogen Street and St. Kitts, weaving a world from the scraps of speech and the old photographs which can transport him to a different landscape. It's a strange, and fragmented, world, one that, by the end of the book, Pemberton has spun into the kind of story hinted at by his Preface: a nuanced, multi-layered, plotted novel of one black family's life in the late 1960s. --Vicky Lebeau --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'Magically inventive... An affetionate evocation of growing up, told with perhaps a touch too much charm' Guardian 'Bright, joyous and full of energy... it is hard to convey adult themes through the dreamlike observances of a child but it is managed here in a witty and thoughtful way' The Times 'Charmingly evokes the spirit and naivete of the Sixties' Alive 'Joe Pemberton's first novel... has inspired comparisons with CATCHER IN THE RYE [and] TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, while the dreamlike quality of some of its fantasy scenes has led to comparisons with BILLY LIAR' (interview in City magazine)
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