No Small Thing by Orlaine McDonald #NoSmallThing @orlainedee @serpentstail #BookReview

 

Alone among the lush tangle of plants on his balcony, Earl watches as a broken family reunites in the flat below.

There's Livia, who has been running for long enough to think her past might never catch up with her. Now she's forced to catch her breath and face the daughter she left behind.

Then Mickey, angry about having a mother who left, a father who died, about the mess she's made of her own life. With no other place to go, she needs the mother who abandoned her.

And Summer, whose new grandmother is weird, and whose mum is always sad or out looking for men to distract her. Left to roam, she finds friends who are willing to give her the attention that Mickey won't. But are they as kind as she thinks they are?

This is a novel about the power and pain of mothering. It crackles with desire, burns with hope and sings in a voice as compelling as it is true.

No Small Thing by Orlaine McDonald was published on 18 July 2024 by Serpent's Tail and is the author's first novel. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review. 

This evocative and emotionally challenging novel is just under 240 pages in length. It is so deep, so taut and wonderfully woven with a small cast of colourful yet flawed characters. It really is a triumph.

The author opens with a prologue that is shocking and delivers a massive emotional punch, she then goes back a year and the novel is told over the following twelve months. 

A housing estate in South London, populated by ordinary working class people, an area of social deprivation, but with grassy parks and trees and wild foxes. 

Earl lives on the floor above the three lead female characters; Livia, Mickey and Sunny. He spends most of his day attending to his vast array of house plants, taken from cuttings from the gardens of people that he works for. Earl is surrounded by photographs of his late mother Bibby, a woman whose words have echoed through his life forever. He observes the women in the flat below, he hears them, he sees their regular comings and goings, and he reaches out to the 'Child', Sunny. 

Livia, Mickey and Sunny are three generations of the same family, yet do not know each other at all. Mickey feels that Livia failed as a mother, and this was the last place that she wanted to end up. However, her father Jimmy has died and the man she was living with was handy with his fists, Livia's flat was the last resort for her and her daughter Sunny. 

This author is so skilled at portraying the issues of inequality, family trauma and race for mixed-race women in London. All three of these women have to deal with the problems of poor and unsafe housing, domestic violence and health inequalities. Yet she does this in a very down to earth fashion, there's no sentimentality here, just plain hard facts. Both Livia and Mickey have made many rash and bad decisions in their lives, and the effects on young Sunny are glaringly obvious as she struggles through her school life, with an often uncontrollable temper and an urge to know everything that is happening, Sunny's life seems to be one long round of punishment. 

This is a story that can be incredibly bleak, especially as Mickey makes mistake after mistake. The cigarettes, the booze, the badly chosen sexual partners, these keep on happening, time after time. As Sunny gets a little older, she begins to question the relationships within her own family, and then seeks solace in others outside the family, but like Mickey, she doesn't always make the best choices. It is what happens within one of these 'friendships' that ultimately becomes the downfall of this family. 

Blunt, raw, astute and gripping, this is a magnificent look at parenting relationships, in their many forms. Often very tender, it is also so very brutal at times. Beautifully written, with prose to savour. Highly recommended. 

Orlaine McDonald is a writer of mixed Jamaican and Irish heritage, and lives in
London. 

This is her first novel.

X @orlainedee