Reviews of Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley

Media Reviews

Washington Post In these opening pages, Mottley effectively outlines the perilous economy of poverty in America. It's a dramatic accounting that gives tangible form to what millions of invisible people endure amid so much bounty...My god — that voice. It's sometimes too painful to keep reading, but always too urgent to stop. In page after page, you can hear Mottley's precocious work as a poet...She's already perfected the delicate task of infusing these observations with a kind of raw poetry without doing violence to the natural cadence of her narrator's speech.

New York Times Mottley writes with a lyrical abandon that reminds us she was once Oakland's youth poet laureate. Some similes land better than others. A confusingly underdeveloped romance between Kiara and her best friend, Alé, who "moves kinda like the Hulk" and mesmerizes Kiara by rolling a joint, feels unearned when it finally comes to fruition. But beneath this gratuitous embroidery, there's a desperation — a reaching, through language, for some kind of salvation — a counterpoint to the carelessness with which the protagonist wields her body.

The Guardian (UK) Nightcrawling marks the dazzling arrival of a young writer with a voice and vision you won't easily get out of your head...When asked how to write in a world dominated by a white culture, Toni Morrison once responded: 'By trying to alter language, simply to free it up, not to repress or confine it...Tease it. Blast its racist straitjacket.' At a time when structural imbalances of capital, heath, gender, and race deepen divides, the young American Leila Mottley's debut novel is a searing testament to the liberated spirit and explosive ingenuity of such storytelling.

Booklist (starred review) Stunning...Kiara is an unforgettable dynamo, and her story brings critical human depth to conversations about police sexual violence.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Lush, immersive...It's Kiara's intense, anguished interiority rendered in lovely and poetic exposition that drives this evocation of an underclass and the disposable women just trying to survive...The acute observations are more remarkable still considering the author is herself a promising Oakland teen.

Library Journal (starred review) Undeniably bleak but littered with small beauties and a powerful discourse on the dehumanizing effects policing can have on marginalized communities, bodies, and minds (and especially on Black women). Mottley's novel understands that sometimes a happy ending just means surviving.

Publishers Weekly (starred review) [A] bold and beautiful account of two Black siblings striving to thrive and survive...Scenes of realism are rendered with a poet's eye...This heartrending story makes for a powerful testament to a Black woman's resilience.

 James McBride, author of Deacon King Kong Leila Mottley has an extraordinary gift. She writes with the humility and sparkle of a child, but with the skill and deft touch of a wizened, seasoned storyteller.

 Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy There is a compelling argument to make that Nightcrawling is the most compelling book written by an American teenager in my lifetime. Somehow, even that feels too brittle for the way Leila Mottley pulls us through a body, a city and a nation equally consumed with crawling toward liberation and jogging toward inequitable failure. Nightcrawling is a scorching, incredibly readable book that takes seriously the task of readerly provocation on every page. Get ready. Or don't. It doesn't matter. Leila Mottley is here.

 Tommy Orange, author of There There The writing in Leila Mottley's Nightcrawling erupts and flows like lava, makes hot bright an Oakland that runs the city's uncontrollable brilliance, its destructive and generative veins the same, Mottley's energetic writing here too, bursts at the seams of every page, pushing you deeper into a story you can't help but continue swallowing, stay thirsty for, while it swallows you whole.

Reader Reviews

Angec
A new raw talent is here
It is very clear why this striking book is piquing the interest of 2022 award winners already. A very unique written voice, author Leila Mottley brings this story to life through the eyes of seventeen year old Kiara Johnson. A girl who had to own ...   Read More

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