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This is the story of K. If you believe your life to be as fictitious as K's, if you find yourself within the pages of this book, then you are holding the pen and not me.
Attachments are broken at birth. Shards slide apart. K: a child put into foster care, a boy brought back to the city, a man who must fight to make sense of his past. Is there hope to be found in a broken mind? Can the pieces of a life come together to reveal an image that's steady? Episodic, fragmented, full of poetry's coiled power, That Reminds Me is the story of one young man remembering. It's an entreaty to a lost culture, and a fight for love, for family, and for the respite of fixed identity. And in its searing and delicate questionings—of belonging, addiction, sexuality, violence, mental health, and religion—That Reminds Me firmly places Derek Owusu amongst the brightest British writers of today.
"[H]ypnotic...There's a life packed inside the pages of this slim novel...The prose is often stunning...By novel's end, the reader is left feeling as though they've experienced another person's life, both the ecstatic heights and harrowing depths. Owusu reckons movingly with complex personal and familial dynamics." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Owusu's prose is low on concrete details as to what's going on, but it features vivid passages that range from poetic ('My side of the bed is still tender with my silhouette') to musical ('I arrived at this ailment with no one trailing, no roses twirling'). It amounts to a short, sharp, and stinging tone poem that the reader won't want to put down." —Publishers Weekly
"Published earlier in the UK, Owusu's slight novel was awarded the 2020 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut fiction. Short chapters, some merely a paragraph in length, propel the narrative. Don't be fooled by its slight size, however; this poetic story packs a big emotional punch and will engage a range of readers." —Library Journal
"A singular achievement." —The Guardian (UK)
"That Reminds Me is the story of a young child growing into adulthood while negotiating the impossibly difficult circumstances of émigré life compounded by foster care, poverty, racism and varieties of cultural difference. Derek Owusu tell this story with extraordinary insight and emotional subtlety, almost inventing a new literary form as he takes you into this child/man's experience on an intimate, nearly cellular level. To call it moving is an understatement." —Mary Gaitskill
"Owusu is writer of jaw-dropping talent and That Reminds Me will break over you like a storm, seething with wonder, wisdom, lightning, terrors and so much heartbreaking beauty. Simply glorious." —Junot Díaz
"A dreamy, impressionistic offering of reassembled fragments of memories emerging through the misty beauty of a deliciously individualistic poetic sensibility with flashes of Twi and UK London Ebonics to further remind us of what has been missing from British poetry...I can't tell you how impressed I was and how much I enjoyed reading this stunning book." —Bernardine Evaristo
This information about That Reminds Me 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.
Derek Owusu is a writer, poet and podcaster from north London. He discovered his passion for literature at the age of twenty-three while studying exercise science at university. Unable to afford a change of degree, Derek began reading voraciously and sneaking into English Literature lectures at the University of Manchester. Derek edited and contributed to Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space. That Reminds Me, his first novel, won the 2020 Desmond Elliott Prize
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