The Pennington half-siblings

This is a fun read, but not to be taken entirely seriously. It starts with an introduction of the vast cast, of Cyril Pennington’s five children and their mothers. His eldest and youngest, Nikisha and Prynce have the same Jamaican mother, Bernice, although they are born 10 years apart. The second child, Danny, is mixed-race, with a white mother. The third and fourth are daughters, Dimple and Lizzie, with Indian-Jamaican and Yoruban mothers respectively, who were born 3 weeks apart because Dimple was 3 weeks late. Cyril is for most part an absent parent, although once, when the eldest was 19 and the youngest 9, and since they all live within a 5 mile radius of each other in London, he brought them to be introduced to each other. Since then, they had minimal contact despite being half siblings. 

When Dimple is 30 years old, fighting off an assault from an aggressive boyfriend, the boyfriend accidentally hits his head and seems to be dead. Having no friends, and her protective mother away in Spain, Dimple resorts to calling her half siblings for help. This is what brings them all back together, and if it is slightly farcical and far-fetched, much of it is for the comedic value. The supposedly-dead boyfriend comes back to life and vanishes while the 5 siblings are trying to bury his body. This gives the plotline a reason for these 5 to continue interactions.  

Language-wise, there is just a little accent and slang here and there, particularly when Cyril is speaking, because he has refused to lose his Jamaican accent despite arriving in the UK at 15:

“’Anything for me, Bill?’ Cyril asked the postman. ‘Unless it’s bills you bring me, Bill. You cyan keep dem.’”

p8

Sometimes there are amusing terms employed by the siblings, such as “moist yute” (p109) which is probably a derogatory term for being over-emotional.  

The story is well told, handling so many characters reasonably well. However, the women characters are better drawn than the male ones, which tend to be a little more two-dimensional and stereotyped. Danny the plumber is depicted as a sweet, steady man who has made his young son the centre of his life, who took the rap for his friend and went to jail for years, who works out a lot and builds much muscle but is rather shy about discussing his feelings. Prynce is the baby of the family, a playboy, care-free, good-natured, laid-back young man of 25, with no worries and no cares. The women however, are more complex. Nikisha is bossy and non-nonsense, but she does have a large capacity for caring, for stepping up, for rallying others. Lizzie is ambitious and judgemental, but has a softer side and the ability to form a strong partnership. Dimple is the chief protagonist, neurotic, dependent, with low self-esteem, but attentive to the feelings of others, and much too soft and naïve for her own good. 

The writing is mostly fun and fast-paced, the dialogue is convincing, but here and there, a jarring note is sometimes struck, which careful editing would have ironed out:

“It was still cold outside as winter blazed on, but the sun was shining at the very least”

p316

Am not sure ‘blazed’ is a good word, particularly for British winters which tend to be damp and sluggish, and never ‘blazing’ in any sense of the word. Or when Nikisha confronts Kyron at a party,

“’There he is,” she said, walking slowly over to an unassuming Kyron…”

p320

Kyron is a bully, aggressive, entitled, spoilt, unprincipled, and many other things, but unassuming he is not. Perhaps the author meant the unsuspicious Kyron? The book definitely needs editing, to ensure key names do not get miswritten at critical moments, such as when Dimple is having an affair with Roman, Kyron’s best friend, and they are in Roman’s house, discussing Kyron. Dimple has raised the issue to Roman that he has not been taking her calls since Kyron discovered their affair.

“Kyron shrugged. ‘But now you’re here.’”

p228

– but Kyron is not in the room. It should have read, “Roman shrugged”: a fairly embarrassing confusion of names.  

Typos aside, it is still a flawed book, but nevertheless a fun book, and very much of its time and its culture. It is not quite a strong as Queenie, Carty-Williams’ debut novel, but then second novels are apparently notoriously difficult to write. It perhaps bites off a bit more than it can comfortably chew, in having such a large cast of characters, but manages well enough so that the reader is not lost (except for the first few pages where the introduction of the characters is made much too densely, and probably intentionally so). The premise of these 5 strangers being willing to cover up a death and so incriminating themselves in criminal activity, is unlikely, as is the ending of how Kyron is defeated. Throughout, the reason given for their choices to act on their own rather than ask for help from the correct authorities, is that they are afraid to get the police involved, because none of them trust the police, or have had bad experiences with the police already. In such ways, there are nods to the lived experiences of being people of colour in the UK, but that angle is not front-staged necessarily, in this novel. But despite some criticisms of the shortcomings of this novel, I would agree Carty-Williams is a great voice on UK’s writing scene, lively and fresh.