That Reminds Me
Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2020
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3.6 • 5 Ratings
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2020
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'A singular achievement.'
Michael Donkor, Guardian
'Heartbreaking, important and original.'
Christie Watson, author of THE LANGUAGE OF KINDNESS
'Derek Owusu's writing is honest, moving, delicate, but tough. Once you lock on to his words, it is hard to break eye contact. A beautiful meditation on childhood, coming of age, the now, and the media. This work is heartfelt.'
Benjamin Zephaniah
'Honest and beautiful.'
Guy Gunaratne, author of IN OUR MAD AND FURIOUS CITY
'When writing is this honest, it soars. What an incredible use of language and truth.'
Yrsa Daley-Ward
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Anansi, your four gifts raised to nyame granted you no power over the stories I tell...
This is the story of K.
K is sent into care before a year marks his birth. He grows up in fields and woods, and he is happy, he thinks. When K is eleven, the city reclaims him. He returns to an unknown mother and a part-time father, trading the fields for flats and a community that is alien to him. Slowly, he finds friends. Eventually, he finds love. He learns how to navigate the city. But as he grows, he begins to realise that he needs more than the city can provide. He is a man made of pieces. Pieces that are slowly breaking apart
That Reminds Me is the story of one young man, from birth to adulthood, told in fragments of memory. It explores questions of identity, belonging, addiction, sexuality, violence, family and religion. It is a deeply moving and completely original work of literature from one of the brightest British writers of today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Owusu's impressionistic debut follows a young man of Ghanaian descent who comes of age in contemporary London. K, the narrator and an abused foster child, describes the poverty he faces as a member of the Black working class and his experiences in school, where he is alternately invisible and an object of fascination by classmates. Noting his response to the film The Color Purple, he reflects on how he "wrote Celie out of her story and added her to mine." Such is the connection he has with her despair. K is on a downward spiral shaped by riots, his younger brother's violent crimes, and self-harm (his drinking and pill taking exacerbate his suicidal thoughts). Eventually, he's diagnosed with bipolar disorder and gets treatment at a mental health facility. 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.
