‘Our People. Scattered to your four winds … They land, but do they grow where they fall?” This “half-dreamy, half-sad” question, addressed by a Ghanaian father to his son Kwame, haunts Michael Donkor’s second novel. It casts doubt on the promised land of dream and opportunity that drives so many diasporic narratives: one where first-generation immigrants sweat and save, so that the second generation enjoys a better education and life.
Education is key here, as Kwame is an out gay English teacher in a London state school, helping students grapple with Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Mrs Dalloway. He has a good life – a stable job, supportive parents and colleagues, a flatshare with a posh white sommelier friend, Edwyn. As the son of working-class immigrants, Kwame is well versed in his parents’ pride and sacrifices; he has his ears tuned to racist microaggressions, while his heart is that of a caring teacher. On most fronts, he has landed on his feet. But there’s always something missing in anyone’s life, and in Kwame’s case, it’s men. His self-imposed Grindr ban has lasted eight months. Can he grow as a Black gay man without sex and intimacy? Why is he so uptight, and “a master at gracious refusal”?
The novel’s dual timeline provides some clues. It begins in 1997, when the 10-year-old Kwame is attracted to Yaw, a charismatic 22-year-old distant cousin from Ghana. It then moves swiftly to 2018, when the adult Kwame prioritises work over intimacy. The episodic, alternating structure is informative, suspenseful but risky. Like cutting a cake into equal halves, the two timelines need to move in tandem, so that the past isn’t just a prop for the present, or vice versa. Donkor gives generous – sometimes too generous – space to the young Kwame’s idolisation of Yaw, who “didn’t behave like people were staring at him or acting like he was a god fallen to earth”. Idealisation rarely leads to a happy ending, and it’s to Donkor’s credit that his meticulously observed prose holds back a heartbreaking secret until the final pages.
As the novel moves towards its midpoint, Donkor gives a punchy, ironic account of the young Kwame being taught about the slave trade by a white teacher. “Packed into that ship were rows and rows of people. Black. Black people … Why had no one – Mummy, Daddy, Akua, Yaw – told him about any of this?” As his young self tries to digest this terrifying knowledge, his older self is being drawn to the new Black head, Marcus, fantasising how “he would sniff and slowly pass his tongue around the headteacher’s armpits”. The sexual tension between the two is fun and convincing, and reveals the cornerstone questions in Kwame’s life. Is it because of Yaw that he is more attracted to white men? What frightens and fascinates him about Marcus? What’s behind his closeness to his teasing, privileged white flatmate?
In a novel exploring sexual abstinence, Donkor writes beautifully about the meaning and meaninglessness of sex. Each erotic moment in the book – swiping Grindr profiles, anonymous hook-ups, friends with benefits, or daydreaming – is described with well-measured excitement and puzzlement. Reflecting on why he’s only slept with three Black men, Kwame feels “a very powerful kind of closeness that came with a sense of loss … a feeling that set him on edge rather than settled him”.
The school is a microcosm of society and provides the novel’s heart and soul. Donkor is also a teacher, and through Kwame, he critiques “Assessment Objectives and Grade Boundaries”, the erosion of public funding by successive Tory governments, and inequity in the British education system. “The only reason you like some bits of my [essay] plan is cos those are what you told us to put in,” says one student. Later, however, another student quotes from Virginia Woolf’s diary: “I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters … that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humour, depth.” Donkor’s tightly structured novel may be a far cry from Woolf’s stream of consciousness, but there’s no shortage of humanity, humour and depth.
• Grow Where They Fall by Michael Donkor is published by Fig Tree (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. Kit Fan’s first novel is Diamond Hill.
