Life on the streets can get sticky, and this is a litter-strewn hot mess of a story. Moses McKenzie’s debut novel, set in his home town of Bristol, follows dream-chasing Sayon Hughes as he hustles to save enough money to fulfil a fanciful ambition and buy “the house-atop-the-hill” in Clifton. It’s a dream that at times feels as futile as Lennie’s ambition in Of Mice and Men to live off the fat of the land and tend to rabbits.
An Olive Grove in Ends is a celebration of community, from domino-playing uncles to drug-addled down-and-outs, the inhabitants of a city on the brink of change. The action moves from Bristol’s St Paul’s neighbourhood to Stapleton Road (“Stapes”), where the struggle is between crime and legitimacy, staying out of trouble and getting caught. It’s a landscape enlivened by the police lurking, ready to pounce, and gentrification knocking on the door.
There is an impressive depth to McKenzie’s storytelling. Biblical references and Jamaican proverbs punctuate the narrative, while the grittiness is offset by an unexpected tenderness, especially in the on-off relationship between Sayon and his childhood sweetheart, Shona.
Though there are some sluggish digressions in the form of flashbacks, and the occasional sentence that falls flat (“I spent the second half of Year 7 in a wonderful haze”), the depiction of 00s childhoods will resonate with anyone who can remember fashion brands such as Avirex, filesharing program LimeWire and US sitcom Moesha. The violence, meanwhile, is handled with care and never once feels hyperbolic.
Thematically, An Olive Grove is not dissimilar to Guy Gunaratne’s In Our Mad and Furious City (2018) and Gabriel Krauze’s Who They Was (2020). But unlike those two London-based novels, McKenzie’s is unapologetically Bristolian. His characterisation of the local people is vivid (“four builders, their arms thick and tattooed, their tongues coarse like sailors [who] hit every ‘R’ like joyriders hitting speed bumps”), capturing their heart and guts and grace.
The book’s skilful, knife-edge climax has a cinematic tension, fuelled by the sad inevitability of a life lived on the streets. As Sayon’s trouble-making cousin Cuba says: “Once you’re fully in dis world only a few can leave fam.” Brutal in places but always beautiful, An Olive Grove in Ends is a bullishly brilliant debut by a young author with a very bright future.
• Ashley Hickson-Lovence’s new novel, Your Show, is published by Faber
• An Olive Grove in Ends by Moses McKenzie is published by Wildfire (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
