Fire Rush: SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023

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Amuch-anticipated debut novel . . . Crooks artfully examines the conflicts of clashing cultures and what it means to be in constant fear for your life. It’s a tale of very raw emotions and heavy grief, but Crooks leaves space for hope. The lyricism of her prose rings out through her use of patois, creating a multilayered literary experience that speaks to the soul like a great reggae album. Perfect for fans of Bernardine Evaristo and Edwidge Danticat.”— Booklist The New Life is based, in part, on real people and revolves around a group of radical free thinkers in Victorian England who wish to live and love as they choose, without fear or shame. John Addington is married to Catherine, but falls for Frank, a working-class printer, while Henry Ellis’s wife desires women. Addington and Ellis decide to write a book together; a revolutionary text that will challenge convention and the law. And we burn ourselves, night into day, on dub riddims in the Crypt, praying Babylon won't take our world away. Named a Most Anticipated Book by The Washington Post, Bustle, The Millions, and The Chicago Review of Books believe this is Jacqueline Crooks' first novel length publication and I'm so excited by her as a writer! This doesn't come out until next March, but definitely but this on your to-read list because it's a fantastic book!

I was blown away by Fire Rush—an exceptional and stunningly original novel by a major new writer. Through the life of a young woman, Jacqueline Crooks excavates a submerged aspect of Britain’s underground cultures—the dub reggae scene of the 1970s and 80s. She takes us deep inside its wild, angry and hungry soul, and her mesmerizing, imaginative and incantatory writing leaves us swaying to the bass of the visceral rhythms she so powerfully describes. By the end of the novel, I felt charged and changed and already longed to re-read it.”—Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other First, with Moose. He is an amalgamation of a couple of the good men that I turned my nose up at when I was younger because I didn’t know how to value goodness, kindness, and stability. I’d like to go to that cabin in Scotland and get snowed in for the weekend. At the age of 60, with all the awareness and confidence that comes with age, I would value that kind of solid, dependable, loving man. I think it would be a memorable weekend. I feel to tell him that I love him bad, but I'm afraid of songs with upbeat words and downbeat music and up to now that's all I've known of love.The book is in three parts moving from Norwood to Bristol and then to Jamaica. The story is continuously told by Yamaye as her life in Norwood is upended when her boyfriend Moose is killed in police custody and then rioting and protests break out and her life is endangered. A snap decision has her moving to Bristol with a male friend who turns out to not be who she expected him to be with disastrous consequences. Finally Jamaica is shown in all its beauty as Yamaye visits Moose’s grandmother and searches for traces of her own mother. A war in the animal kingdom. I showed it to a schoolfriend and he couldn’t believe that I wrote it. I think in some ways, all the writing I’ve done afterwards is a form of proof that I could do this.

The lights in the shops go out. Asase and Rumer march ahead on the darkening streets. Best shut me mouth: the sistren need each other on the streets, in the dance hall. Together we are a three-pin plug, charging ourselves to dub riddim. Connecting through each other to the underground. I found this awesome playlist I had to share, because you'll want to be groovin to summat after reading this! https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/20... Asase loves nothing better than pushing herself into the crowded record shop late on Saturday afternoons when we return from the city. By that time it’s ram-up with men, their arses pressed against the window, criss-crossing smoke above them. Rumer always tries to drag her past the shop, but it’s pointless. Asase opens the door and eases herself in and – yeah, we follow. If you’re writing a book like this, which is really embedded in a culture, you’ve got to trust yourself. Trust the editors on structure, but when it comes to the voice, and the cultural nuance, you’ve got to be brave.Set in the 70s in London we meet Yamaye who is from Jamaican heritage. She goes out partying with her friends on a weekend to an underground club called The Crypt. They get to whine, and grind and meet other people, but also The Crypt is a way for them to let go of all things that holds them down and escape for a bit. During a night at The Crypt Yamaye meets Moose, a furniture maker from Jamaica and they fall madly and deeply in love. For them, their relationship is an escape, a safe space, a place for them to feel whole.