There's a stash of heroin waiting to be imported, and no one seems sure what to do with it . . . But Ayla's a gardener, and she has a plan.
Offering a fresh and funny take on the machinery of the North London heroin trade, Keeping the House lifts the lid on a covert world thriving just beneath notice: not only in McDonald's queues and men's clubs, but in spotless living rooms and whispering kitchens. Spanning three generations, this is the story of the women who keep their family - and their family business - afloat, juggling everything from police surveillance to trickier questions of community, belonging and love.
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Careful, when you turn your eyes towards someone you allow them the chance to turn theirs on you. KEEPING THE HOUSE, 1999
(@andothertweets, 7 September 2021, paperback, 256 pages, bought from @LRBbookshop via a Subscription Box)
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Keeping the House is a debut. It's a corker and I can't wait to see what the author comes up with next. The book reminds me a lot of my one of my favourite books of all time, The Bricks That Built the Houses by Kae Tempest which is also set in London and focuses on the drugs trade though the characters are very different. Keeping the House is dazzling, dark at times, full of real-life flesh and blood characters set in a fully realised, modern world. This is an impressive book.