Name: The Bricks that Built the Houses
Rating: 4.125 (16 reviews)
ISBN: 9781408857311

Kate Tempest

"Becky, Harry, and Leon are leaving London in a fourth-hand Ford with a suitcase full of stolen money, in a mess of tangled loyalties and impulses. But can they truly leave the city that's in their bones?....Rich in character and restless in perspective, driven by ethics and empathy, it asks-and seeks to answer-how best to live with and love one another." -- page [2] book jacket.

The Bricks that Built the Houses

The debut novel from "dynamic" "wunderkind" Kate Tempest proves her talent to be boundless and unstoppable.* Becky, Harry, and Leon are leaving London in a fourth-hand Ford with a suitcase full of stolen money, in a mess of tangled loyalties and impulses. But can they truly leave the city that's in their bones? Kate Tempest's novel reaches back through time--through tensely quiet dining rooms and crassly loud clubs--to the first time Becky and Harry meet. It sprawls through their lives and those they touch--of their families and friends and faces on the street--revealing intimacies and the moments that make them. And it captures the contemporary struggle of urban life, of young people seeking jobs or juggling jobs, harboring ambitions and making compromises. The Bricks that Built the Houses is an unexpected love story. It's about being young, but being part of something old. It's about how we become ourselves, and how we effect our futures. Rich in character and restless in perspective, driven by ethics and empathy, it asks--and seeks to answer--how best to live with and love one another. *Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Karen E

Kae Tempest

The highly anticipated debut novel from Kate Tempest--acclaimed poet, playwright, rapper, and recording artist--proves her talent to be boundless and unstoppable.

Martin Heuer

Claire Matthews 

heleen de boever

Monique Baham

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERAward-winning poet and rapper Kate Tempest's electrifying debut novel takes us into the beating heart of the capital in this multi-generational tale of drugs, desire and belonging.It gets into your bones. You don't even realise it, until you're driving through it, watching all the things you've always known and leaving them behind.Young Londoners Becky, Harry and Leon are leaving town in a fourth-hand Ford Cortina with a suitcase full of money. They are running from jealous boyfriends, dead-end jobs, violent maniacs and disgruntled drug dealers, in the hope of escaping the restless tedium of life in south-east London - the place they have always called home.As the story moves back in time, to before they had to leave, we see them torn between confidence and self-loathing, between loneliness and desire, between desperate ambition and the terrifying prospect of getting nothing done.In The Bricks that Built The Houses Kate Tempest explores contemporary city life with a powerful moral microscope, giving us irresistible stories of hidden lives, and showing us how the best intentions don't always lead to the right decisions

The Bricks that Built the Houses

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