Cuts Both Ways

APPLE BOOKS REVIEW

The success of Candice Brathwaite’s best-selling non-fiction reads dealing with motherhood and other life lessons lies in her ability to speak directly to Black women in the UK with frank understanding of their shared experiences. Cuts Both Ways is her first novel, a young adult coming of age, founded in tragedy. Within the pages of this story about a Black teenager struggling to make sense of the world after her brother is murdered, Brathwaite employs the same unshrinking honesty about the devastating effects of knife crime. When Cynthia’s parents move from the diverse hustle and bustle of south London and into the countryside, she finds herself enrolled at an elite private school where she is one of only two other Black students. She falls under the attention of two brothers, the apex point of a love triangle that eventually reveals itself to be far more complex than just adolescent hormones and petty jealousy. Cynthia balances the flushes of first love with the pressures of exacting parents, the explicit and implicit racism she is confronted with in her new environment, and the grief that ripples not just through her own, now fractured, family but across entire communities in the wake of a devastating crime. The issues explored in Cuts Both Ways are handled compassionately and the characters are fully realised, making it easy to relate to and empathise with the pain they carry. Brathwaite’s heroine, Cynthia is fearless but fragile, illustrating that underneath the teenage bravado, these are children dealing with situations that even grown adults find difficult to navigate with care. Avoiding judgement and moralising, Brathwaite illustrates the zero-sum game of knife crime through the eyes and voices of those left to pick up the pieces shattered by its impact. Cuts Both Ways is a sensitively written portrayal of Black girlhood and family, laced with humour, mystery and romance.