I know almost nothing about Natasha Brown but her debut novel Assembly feels like a cliched autobiographical first novel: she’s a black Oxbridge graduate who got a City job working in the finance sector - exactly like the nameless main character in this novel. Assembly isn’t a great debut though and reads like an author who’s still learning how to tell a story and didn’t quite know what she was shooting for.
The “story”, such as it is: a young black woman working in the London banking sector experiences some casual racism - a colleague says her recent promotion was due to a “diversity hire” - and gets a cancer diagnosis. She goes to her rich boyfriend’s ancestral home where she senses his elderly parents are racist, even though they don’t do anything overtly racist. And that’s it.
The title could be a reference to the school assemblies the main character goes to make corporate presentations at, all the while feeling like a fraud because she’s promising young minority girls of a world that isn’t as she’s presenting it - there is still prejudice, etc. - or a statement of the main character’s being and what went into her creation - how a person is assembled.
But to what end? Yes, prejudice, racism, etc. will likely always exist because there are always shitty people in every generation - but that doesn’t mean progress hasn’t been made collectively. I don’t totally understand what the main character’s problem is. She’s very well-off, owning her own property, having a lot of money, and working a prestigious job - that’s something a lot of people strive for, including those kids she’s supposedly “lying” to. She’s in a relationship with an even wealthier (white) guy who wants to marry her and whose parents like her. She’s got a cancer diagnosis (not uncommon and likely to be something each of us deal with at some point anyway) but otherwise her life’s great.
It feels like a lot of vague grumbling about nothing. You can’t change history. Maybe the narrative around colonialism will over time but the basics still happened (ie. in this case, the main complaint being slavery) so why not accept it and move on? People make snide remarks at work and that’ll never change - report it to HR or accept it and move on. Not happy with your relationship? Break up and find someone who will make you happy. What’s the point of this story? This person has all the agency they need to at least attempt to make their lives more comfortable for themselves but they choose not to for no reason.
There isn’t a good story here or a memorable character or scene in Assembly. Just a gratuitously gloomy malcontent who’s read too much bell hooks and wants to demonstrate what she’s learned. Which is how the book ends, in a muddle of race theory that builds to nothing - everyone’s racist and history is all lies, or something.
It’s a testament to Brown’s writing ability that I still read this in a day, despite not jibing with its content, but I’m glad I read her second novel Universality before this one because I don’t think I’d have picked it up if I’d read Assembly first. The two are very different - Universality is a much more focused, cleverly-constructed and compelling novel, while Assembly is a mix of (probably) autobiographical snippets and dry university learning unsatisfyingly slopped together into an underwhelming pseudo-narrative. Brown is an undeniably gifted writer but I wouldn’t recommend Assembly - check out Universality instead.
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