Fire Rush (2023)

Why this one?

I’m currently dipping into some tempting titles from the 2023 Women’s Prize Longlist. Having covered Glory when reading last year’s Booker shortlist, this is my second read from this year’s list. I was attracted to this one by both the subject matter, which takes in the underground reggae/dub scene in London in the late 70s and early 80s, and by the endorsements from the likes of Bernardine Evaristo.

This is Jacqueline Crooks’ debut novel, following a short story collection, The Ice Migration (2019), which was longlisted for the Orwell Prize in Political Fiction.  Crooks was born in Jamaica, but grew up in the 70s and 80s in Southall, West London, as part of a diverse migrant community.  She studied Social Policy at Roehampton University and subsequently an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths, both in London.   

Thoughts, etc.

Fire Rush is focused on Yamaye, a young woman of Jamaican heritage, living on the Tombstone Estate in suburban London in the late 1970s. Her mother is long gone, though remains a spectral presence in her life, and her father, while physically present, is cold and distant. She escapes into an underground culture of Caribbean music, centring on a local club called the Crypt, which is of course quite literally underground. She parties with her friends Asase and Rumer (the latter an Irish immigrant) and takes on the male-dominated club culture by developing her own knowledge of music and fierce line in lyrics which she begins to unleash at the Crypt. She meets a sensitive and romantic man, Moose, at the club, and the two fall in love and dream of escape to the Jamaican countryside.

For the first third of the book, Yamaye’s life is geographically limited but reasonably optimisitic, but this soon falls apart, with Moose brutally murdered in police custody and Asase imprisoned for another violent crime. She escapes first to a grim existence in a gangster-riddled Bristol and a ‘safe house’ which is anything but, and ultimately to Jamaica, following the trail of Moose’s family and dreams and also - perhaps - her own missing mother.

I was immediately drawn into Fire Rush - it brings to life an exciting and significant moment in British cultural history, one which - as is so often the case - is originated and culturally driven forward by Britain’s (and especially London’s) fertile melting-pot of immigrant communities. Its characters - both likeable and considerably less so - are vividly drawn and engaging, and we get a real sense of music as a positive force, as escape from the lack of hope seen elsewhere in life on the aptly named Tombstone Estate. The relationship between Yamaye and Moose is beautifully rendered, sucking us in to a potential alternate reality in which Yamaye can escape through romantic love and the couple’s shared passions for music, nature, and conservation. It takes her far away from the Crypt, into the countryside and unlikely seeming river cruises. But it’s brutally exposed as an unattainable reality in which the infinitely more likely ‘escape’ posited from Babylon’s forces is inevitable - and violent - death.

The novel then takes a sharp turn in terms of tone, as Yamaye is ‘rescued’ by Monassa and taken to a ‘safe house’ in Bristol. Here, she soon realises, she has not found escape, but another kind of underground existence, this one far less attractive than that of the positive energy of the Crypt. She’s co-opted by gangsters led by Monassa and repeatedly raped by him, alongside other women experiencing the same fate. In spite of this, she continues to develop her musical persona at a local shebeen, developing an audience and some notoreity for her increasingly fierce and rightfully angry performances. But as the owner of her latest musical venue repeatedly reminds her, this is no sanctuary for women. In a city where the waters that surround her are haunted by her ancestors’ horrific past in the former centre of the slave trade, the idea of escape and freedom feels impossible. I found this section considerably more difficult than the first. Deliberate as this move is by Crooks, it really did feel like a shattering experience to read after the hope briefly glimpsed in the first third. In retrospect, it’s an important part of the overall texture of the novel, but it isn’t an easy read.

The final section sees Yamaye in Jamaica, taking the novel into a more spiritual phase as she connects with Moose’s grandmother and explore the landscape he wanted them to experience together. While her troubled recent past is never entirely (or definititively) escaped, there is at least a sense of openness to this section that makes it feel that bit more intriguing. There is still an underground presence here, but this time it’s in the shape of caves, which lack the doors and cages of her previous boltholes, and are more positively connected to nature. The novel ends somewhat ambiguously, but with a sense that a kind of spiritual transcendence that allows her to connect with her missing loves has been achieved, via an even deeper embracing of the threads that offer hope throughout the novel - music, and her Jamaican heritage.

Score

8.5

A really interesting first novel, with a lot to recommend it. Its first section is really magical, and the rest - necessarily bleaker - only suffers by comparison. I’ve found other books that deal with spiritual / mystical beliefs to be a little off-putting, but this one managed to keep me engaged by making those aspects (while ever-present) more of an underlying drumbeat (an appropriately musical analogy).

Next up

Another book from the 2023 longlist, though which one I’m not yet sure…