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Published Apr 2023
352 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Set amid the Jamaican diaspora in London at the dawn of 1980s, a mesmerizing story of love, loss, and self-discovery that vibrates with the liberating power of music
Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she goes raving with her friends, the "Tombstone Estate gyals," at The Crypt, an underground dub reggae club in their industrial town on the outskirts of London. Raised by her distant father after her mother's disappearance when she was a girl, Yamaye craves the oblivion of sound - a chance to escape into the rhythms of those smoke-filled nights, to discover who she really is in the dance-hall darkness.
When Yamaye meets Moose, a soulful carpenter who shares her Jamaican heritage, a path toward a different kind of future seems to open. But then, Babylon rushes in. In a devastating cascade of violence that pits state power against her loved ones and her community, Yamaye loses everything. Friendless and adrift, she embarks on a dramatic journey of transformation that takes her to the Bristol underworld and, finally, to Jamaica, where past and present collide with explosive consequences.
The unforgettable story of one young woman's search for home, animated by a ferocity of vision, electrifying music, and the Jamaican spiritual imagination, Fire Rush is a blazing achievement from a brilliant voice in contemporary fiction.
"An incredible story ... The rich descriptions of Yamaye and her friends skanking to the music are immersive and gesture at the spirits of Yamaye's Jamaican forebears ... [Fire Rush] is a triumph." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A compelling coming-of-age story about personal loss and political awakening ... incendiary ... Crooks creates unforgettable characters here, fleshed out with empathy and wisdom." —Kirkus Reviews
"A much-anticipated debut novel ... Crooks artfully examines the conflicts of clashing cultures and what it means to be in constant fear for your life. It's a tale of very raw emotions and heavy grief, but Crooks leaves space for hope. The lyricism of her prose rings out through her use of patois, creating a multilayered literary experience that speaks to the soul like a great reggae album. Perfect for fans of Bernardine Evaristo and Edwidge Danticat." —Booklist
"A bustling and lively story of black womanhood and dub music." —The Guardian
"I was blown away by Fire Rush—an exceptional and stunningly original novel by a major new writer. Through the life of a young woman, Jacqueline Crooks excavates a submerged aspect of Britain's underground cultures—the dub reggae scene of the 1970s and 80s. She takes us deep inside its wild, angry and hungry soul, and her mesmerizing, imaginative and incantatory writing leaves us swaying to the bass of the visceral rhythms she so powerfully describes. By the end of the novel, I felt charged and changed and already longed to re-read it." —Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other
"This beautiful, sprawling narrative is wrought with an incredible precision and a musicality which carries every sentence. Crooks' novel haunts but makes space for hope as well." —Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of Open Water
"A brilliant, exuberant novel. Full of beauty, musicality and feminist power." —Irenosen Okojie, author of Butterfly Fish
This information about Fire Rush was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jacqueline Crooks is a Jamaican-born British writer. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the Wasafiri New Writing Prize and the National Short Story Award. Her story collection, The Ice Migration, was longlisted for The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. Fire Rush is her first novel.
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