Some folks really feel like outsiders day-after-day of their lives. One such particular person is Harley Sekyere, a 21-year-old homosexual Black man in England who comes from an unsupportive family, felt at sea at school and has no thought the place to show. That’s a state of affairs a lot of folks will relate to. And it’s the premise of Small Joys, Elvin James Mensah’s sympathetic debut novel.
It’s 2005, shortly after terrorists coordinated a collection of subway and bus bombings that devastated London. Harley had grand plans to graduate from college with a level in music journalism however dropped out. Bereft of some other constructive targets, overwhelmed by emotions of anxiousness and melancholy, he makes a drastic determination: Back residence within the city of Dartford, southeast of London, he wanders into the woods with a small X-ACTO knife.
He catches a break. Muddy, a straight white man “holding a pair of binoculars,” approaches Harley, sees that he’s bleeding and stops him from continuing additional. Fortuitously, Muddy is greater than only a devoted bird-watcher who occurred to stroll by. He’s additionally about to turn into Harley’s roommate.
Mensah then introduces different characters who turn into half of Harley’s help community. They embody Chelsea, a younger white girl whose father owns the house constructing the place Harley and Muddy reside. She’s a good friend of Harley’s and helps him reclaim his outdated job on the cinema the place she works. Also within the combine are Finlay, Muddy’s finest mate, whom Chelsea is relationship; and Noria, a Black girl who’s relationship Muddy and is obsessive about styling Harley’s hair.
The middle of all of that is Harley, of whom Mensah writes with nice affection. He affords unforgettable particulars, equivalent to when he notes that Harley is so self-conscious that he typically shops meals in his cheeks “to create the illusion [he] was eating quicker than [he] actually was.” Harley’s lack of assurance, he says, comes from “anxiety and queerness and failure.” It additionally comes from his homophobic father, a spiritual man hoping to transform his son; his relationship with an abusive older man; and his burgeoning emotions for Muddy.
Small Joys is easier and extra predictable than the books to which it’s already being in contrast, amongst them works by Brandon Taylor and Bryan Washington. The uncooked feelings in Mensah’s guide, nevertheless, will resonate with anybody who has ever felt as in the event that they don’t belong. Harley might really feel like an outsider, however as Mensah astutely notes, he’s acquired lots of firm.
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