Assembly

by Natasha Brown Narrated by Pippa Bennett-Warner

Overview

This blistering, fearless, and unforgettable literary novel finds a woman with everything on the line and a life-or-death decision waiting for her-perfect for fans of Claudia Rankine and Jenny Offill.

Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Go to college, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy an apartment. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.

The narrator of Assembly is a black British woman.*She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can't escape the question: is it time to take it all apart?

Assembly is a story about the stories we live within - those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers.And it is about one woman daring to take control of her own story, even at the cost of her life. With a steely, unfaltering gaze, Natasha Brown dismantles the mythology of whiteness, lining up the debris in a neat row and walking away.

"Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway meets Claudia Rankine's Citizen...as breathtakingly graceful as it is mercilessly true.”-Olivia Sudjic, author of Sympathy and Asylum Road

A woman confronts the most important question of her life in this blistering, fearless, and unforgettable literary debut from "a stunning new writer." (Bernardine Evaristo)

“A quiet, measured call to revolution...This is the kind of book that doesn't just mark the moment things change, but also makes that change possible.”-Ali Smith, author of Summer

"Brilliant. Brown's gaze is piercing."-Avni Doshi, author of Burnt Sugar

Editorial Reviews

SEPTEMBER 2021 - AudioFile

The whisper-soft voice of narrator Pippa Bennett-Warner draws listeners into this story told by an unnamed Black professional woman who is British. Though only two hours long, the audiobook reveals how racism and sexism infiltrate almost every aspect of the woman’s daily life, including the simple acts of walking down the street and entering a shop. Bennett-Warner captures the poetic cadence of the introspective text as the woman ponders colleagues’ reactions to her progress at work, navigates meeting her wealthy white boyfriend’s parents, and makes decisions about a recent medical diagnosis. Bennett-Warner wisely tones down her portrayals of secondary characters, keeping listeners’ attention fully on the main character’s thoughts and lived experiences. The woman’s story is unique to her but is also relatable to others who live with insidious discrimination. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

A short, piercing novel that skewers British ways of thinking about race and class. It's a gorgeous, intimate exploration of one character's thoughts as she approaches a big decision and goes to meet her boyfriend's parents. It came out this summer and I just know that it's going to last for a long time. It's hot, but it's more than just a moment.”—ADAM ZMITH, author of DEEP SNIFF

“A hauntingly accurate novel about the stories we construct for ourselves and others…A completely captivating read you won't be able to put down.”—THE INDEPENDENT

“A razor-sharp debut…delivers a full-throttle blast of devastating social critique.”—DAILY MAIL

“With stylistic economy, Brown etches a portrait of contemporary Britain in all its racial hypocrisy and contradictions, and of a stubbornly brilliant woman for whom death becomes the ultimate protest.”
 —BOOKLIST

"Brown’s literary skills shine from start to finish. She has mastered the deadpan delivery; her sentences are lean and fraught. At 102 pages, Assembly is a treasure of concision."—THE MILLIONS

“Brown’s debut novel is a slim but affecting portrayal of the race, class, and sexual politics in contemporary Britain.”
 —THE MILLIONS, Most Anticipated Books of the Month

“Natasha Brown’s brilliantly sharp and curiously Alice-like debut, has arrived…Slim but not slight, at 112 pages, it blows apart the flimsily constructed notion of a race-blind meritocracy long severed from the umbilical cord of its imperial past…There are echoes of Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Mrs. Dalloway, if we can imagine Clarissa Dalloway trying to convert Cheshire Cat smiles and ‘sympathetic brows’ into actual conversation with her Jamaican-descended future daughter-in-law…Her indictment is forensic, clear, elegant, a prose-polished looking glass held up to her not-so-post-colonial nation. Only one puzzle remains unsolved: how a novel so slight can bear such weight.”—TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

“In just 100 pages Natasha Brown delivers a body blow of a book. Assembly is extraordinary, each word weighed, each detail meticulously crafted. It follows the horrible logic of systemic racism to its ghastly end point through a modern Mrs. Dalloway, drifting through London as a party looms, revealing life’s horrors in a relentless stream of consciousness…Brown’s protagonist jumps off the page at you, and her pain is palpable. Meanwhile, Brown is mercilessly clear-eyed in her delineation of how British culture is also ‘assembled’ — its history whitewashed and arguing against it near-impossible when ‘the only tool of expression is the language of this place’. Yet she wields that language like a weapon and hits her mark again and again with devastating elegance.”—THE TIMES

“Mind-bending and electrifying.”—NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

“Deft, essential, and a novel of poetic consideration, Assembly holds (the Black-British) identity in its hands, examining it until it becomes both truer and stranger – a question more than an answer. I nodded, I mhmed, I sighed (and laughed knowingly, bitterly).”
 —RACHEL LONG, author of the Rathbones Folio-shortlisted MY DARLING FROM THE LIONS

“Assembly is an understated masterpiece. Elegant, the way a scalpel is elegant…powerfully affecting.”—MARIAN KEYES

“An astonishing book that forces us to see what’s underpinning absolutely everything.”—Lauren Elkin, author of FLÂNEUSE

“There are shades of Mrs. Dalloway in Natasha Brown's searing Assembly, which is narrated by an unnamed Black woman as she prepares to spend the day at her boyfriend's parents' estate in the English countryside. But unlike the Virginia Woolf classic, this novel is about a woman who is about to burn an oppressive system to the ground — even if she has to take herself down with it.”
 —POPSUGAR (Best Books of September)

“An achievement that will leave you wondering just how it’s possible that this is only the author’s very first work. It may be taut at only 112 pages, but Brown packs so much commentary and insight inside of every single sentence that you still feel like you’re getting much more than your money’s worth. The book is original and startling all at once, and, after reading Assembly, I cannot wait to see what Natasha Brown does next.”
 —SHONDALAND, Best Fall Reads

“Compact, sly, and sticks with you.”
 —GOOP (The 12 Best Books of the Year)

“Natasha Brown has already garnered comparisons to Virginia Woolfe, and with good reason. Assembly is the thoughtful, incendiary story of one day in the life of its narrator, a Black British woman preparing to attend a lavish party but thinking about the choices she's made—the bourgeoise lifestyle into which she's opted—and whether it’s something she can continue to stomach for even another moment.”
 —TOWN & COUNTRY, Must Read Books of Fall

“Assembly will sweep up readers with the sheer power of Brown's devastatingly eloquent prose, culminating in a gorgeous countryside setting where the narrator, attending a lavish party at her boyfriend's family estate, finally confronts her destiny.”
 —SHELF AWARENESS, Starred Review

“Urgent…This is brilliant, carefully crafted, bittersweet storytelling, a tale of immense pressure, of a ‘career’ that must be performed both during and beyond work hours; the career of being the ‘object,’ an exhausting and endless task.”—MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

“Knocked my socks off. It was the kind of book that, as a writer, made me want to put down my pen slash close my laptop forever because she’d said all the things and said them beautifully.”—Cecelia Rabess, THE MILLIONS

"Assembly by Natasha Brown is a masterwork. The book is 100 pages, but it contains centuries of wisdom, aesthetic experimentation and history. Brown handles her debut with a surgeon’s control and a musician’s sensitivity to sound."—TESS GUNTY, author of National Book Award-winner THE RABBIT HUTCH,

SEPTEMBER 2021 - AudioFile

The whisper-soft voice of narrator Pippa Bennett-Warner draws listeners into this story told by an unnamed Black professional woman who is British. Though only two hours long, the audiobook reveals how racism and sexism infiltrate almost every aspect of the woman’s daily life, including the simple acts of walking down the street and entering a shop. Bennett-Warner captures the poetic cadence of the introspective text as the woman ponders colleagues’ reactions to her progress at work, navigates meeting her wealthy white boyfriend’s parents, and makes decisions about a recent medical diagnosis. Bennett-Warner wisely tones down her portrayals of secondary characters, keeping listeners’ attention fully on the main character’s thoughts and lived experiences. The woman’s story is unique to her but is also relatable to others who live with insidious discrimination. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173360601
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	09/14/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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