DEBUTS FANNY BLAKE
BLACK CAKE by Charmaine Wilkerson (Michael Joseph £14.99, 400 pp)
WHEN estranged siblings Byron and Benny meet again after their mother’s death, misunderstandings and resentments immediately flare between them.
Their mother has left a voice recording, and has instructed that they listen to it together.
as she talks, they discover how many secrets and betrayals have shaped their family’s past and begin to learn who she really was. moreover, she has left them a traditional Caribbean black cake, to be shared ‘when the time is right. You’ll know when’, which adds even greater poignancy.
Cleverly constructed and moving between different narrative points of view, past and present, this is a wonderful, immersive experience. Particularly memorable are the scenes set in the lush Caribbean. These are characters to believe in and empathise with.
MERCIA’S TAKE by Daniel Wiles (Swift £12.99, 208 pp)
IT Is the 1870s. michael Cash is a miner. Day after day, he descends into the subterranean hell of a coal mine where he earns just enough to keep his wife and son Luke alive.
michael is determined that Luke will not follow him into the pits when he grows up. Vivid descriptions of child labour and tragedy make it easy to understand why.
an exit route presents itself when he and co-worker Cain discover a seam of gold, but their trust in each other is rocky and events take another turn.
With his mastery of Black Country dialect and rugged prose stripped to the bone, the author has produced a brilliantly evocative novel of the time when men were in harness to the harsh and unforgiving landscape of mercia (the ancient name for the region).
His father’s reasoning, as michael remembers, is that ‘mercia gives and teks. all of life’s fates explained by this one simple rule. There is no give without take, and mercia’s take was always fair’. a verdict on the life which seethes within these pages.
WHEN WE WERE BIRDS by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo (Hamish Hamilton £14.99, 288 pp)
DARWIN is estranged from his mother when he leaves home for the city of Port angeles. There he gets work in a graveyard, despite his unease at being so close to the dead.
Living on a hill above the city, Yejide mourns her mother, unhappy at having inherited her female ancestors’ ability to speak to the dead.
When Darwin and Yejide meet at the gates of the cemetery, the novel ratchets up in power. Both are loners, struggling with the weight of their upbringings, and their love story unfolds threaded through with supernatural events and dangerous secrets.