Assembly: The critically acclaimed debut novel

This is a really well written, thought provoking, short read. It is the day in the life of an unnamed, black, female protagonist, and the racism and misogyny that she encounters constantly both at work and in the wider community. Even when she is offered a promotion, her work colleagues believe she has got the job because of the colour of her skin and her sex. The fact that she has had to work twice as hard as anyone else to get where she is, is ignored.I can’t help but think that she’s not happy in her job or her relationship, and her cancer diagnosis is pushing these matters to the front of her mind.There’s a lot of racism in this novel, and the effects of that on the main characters psyche. To be constantly thought of as “less than” must be frustrating, depressing and maddening.I’ll be very interested to read what comes next from Natasha Brown.

I read this when re-reading andstudying Virginia Woolf 's 'Mrs. Dalloway ' and found it fascinating. To compare it with its inspiration, which if you elect to transpose a famous novel to the present day, is what you invite readers to do, is to be slightly disappointed. The novella is both approachable and literary but lacks the pulse the dream-like inhabiting of the characters which flows with such fluidity in Woolf's work. Perhaps that is because the almost obsessive note taking, rewriting and editing which gave rise to Virginia Woolf 's work would be very difficult to produce while continuing a successful modern career. Perhaps the fine tooth combing needed to produce the shifting dance of repeated imagery of the earlier book just is not in the style of modern writing.However, DO READ THIS BOOK. It is a clever way to explore the dissatisfaction of a intelligent, successful, young professional, black woman meeting the inherent racism and anti-feminism of British society. It's a quick read that demands a long reflection. They made a film of Michael Cunningham 's 'The Waves'; I'd love to see a TV film of this. READ IT!

This is a short book that tackles important issues such as sexism, racism and sexual harassment. The writing style wasn't my cup of tea at all, which made the reading experience a bit more complicated for me.I feel I didn't understand what was happening in the book, I felt detached from it despite being engaged in the reading. Does it make sense??

Conveys so much complexity in elegantly constructed prose that does all the work of expressing what needs to be said.

Assembly is about a young black woman who has worked hard to get where she wants to be. She has everything she has been striving for, including a successful career in the City, and now she is preparing to attend a garden party at her old-money boyfriend's family estate in the country.There's some excellent writing, and it's a great story, but unfortunately the stream of consciousness style just didn't quite chime for me. It makes the main character seem very self-absorbed and all the secondary characters rather two dimensional. Although it does serve to highlight the constant microaggressions she suffers on a daily basis as she makes her way in a world dominated by white men. She works twice as hard, swallows the insults, keeps quiet and blends in.All in all, it's a good first novel, but I think Natasha Brown has better yet to come.

For the first time in my life I reread this as soon as I finished it! There are memorable insights and scenes but I knew that I would find more on a second reading. The prose is terse, measured and skillful. It's not "enjoyable" but it is definitely instructive giving male, white readers like me a really powerful insight into a view of life very different to my own. It's short but well worth reading twice.

The issues of racial microaggressions and the problems of "succeeding in the system" explored in this book are interesting, but this is fundamentally a pretty weak attempt at a novelised version of Claudia Rankine's massively superior book of poetry (mostly prose) Citizen. That book allowed space for contemplation and left a lot of its ideas to resonate and sit uncomfortably in the mind of the reader. This one creates a protagonist character who experiences myriad microaggressions over its course, but as a result is completely unbelievable as a protagonist if we're to read this as a novel trying to communicate a *person* (because there are simply zero positive experiences here - even if she's meant to be having a breakdown, it still loses force as a result), and if the person is meant to be a non-realistic embodiment of these experiences then the novel fails to engage the reader as a result, as they could simply dismiss this as not believable. The fragmented form doesn't help because frankly the end of it is just a bunch of unconnected notes, often stated far too directly to feel like the narrator's thoughts as opposed to the novelist directly telling us stuff.The sections about her boyfriend are by far the weakest - I get the idea that the containing racist system in Britain might encourage black people that marrying into power is a good idea politically, but the boyfriend here seems to be some kind of Tory advisor figure and it is simply not possible that someone who is not actually on board with that ideology - i.e. not just the UK system of "success", but actual British Conservatism - would put up with this nobhead and his nobhead family, let alone decide to marry him (even if the payoff is she's going to die soon?). And if the narrator is meant to be a Tory then nothing in this novel works either since so much of the anger is (correctly) about the Go Home vans which were a Tory gimmick.

An outstanding short portrait of the underlying privilege, sexism and racism in the UK with an original linguistic style that captivates. I couldn't put it down!

Etat du livre indiqué très bien alors que moyen : pages état neuf mais surcouverture et tranche du livre déchirée. 25 €dans cet état c'est du vol

Vilket snabbt leverans 😱 beställde i går kväll och fick boken idag på morgonen 😍😍

This slim volume packed a punch with its lyrical phrases and soloquies. There were many micro and macro aggressions, with plenty of gas lighting, not to mention the sexual aggressions. This book was full of surprises, not always pretty. The form was both poetry and playwright. Not many writers can pull it off. I recommend to those with a literary and poetic bent.

Hat mir gut gefallen der Schreibstil und die Geschichte die eher skizzenhaft aufgebaut ist und hauptsächlich aus der Introspektion einer Frau besteht die sich verzweifelt bemüht akzeptiert zu werden von der Gesellschaft und ihrem Land.

The narrator has nothing positive to say about anything or anybody in her world except herself. Really? The author may have ability as a writer, but this shallow broadside against Great Britain and all of the imperialists, racists and chauvinists who live there is not a story.