The White Family (41 page)

No …Grave … No … Grave …

Shirley had crossed the river. She walked with his people. The song was deafening, they sang together and it burst from the graveyard, rolled through the Park, soared skyward, skyward, up the sunny hill
–

No … Grave … Shall Hold His Body Down …

No … Grave … Shall Hold His Body Down …

Darren, meanwhile, was fighting the press, slugging it out with a man from the
Sun –

A police helicopter over Hillesden Green Cemetery watched the crowd fan out among the gravestones, hundreds of ants at their invisible purpose.

‘How are we supposed to make sense of this lot?’

‘No effing idea which side is which.’

No … Grave … No … Grave …

Close up, you see the two separate streams, the jostling, the little pockets of aggression, the angry looks, the different skins. Move back a little, and you see the river. It has two banks, but all of it mourns. A great tide of people stops in the graveyard, crying, poised on the edge between past and future.

Straight-backed, Sophie and Shirley walk, and Sophie mutters the Psalm of David.
The night will shine like the day. And darkness will be as light … He has created both darkness and light …

Blindly gleaming, stubborn, warm, life in Shirley pushes, quickens.

‘
The White Family
points to new directions in British writing. Full of power and passion, as well as somte timely warnings, this is one of the year’s finest novels, and it deserves the widest possible readership.’

‘Intensely touching, full of ironies, situational and verbal, [and] brilliantly connected with contemporary society.’

‘
The White Family
tackles an unspeakable subject with quiet courage. Beautifully written, it tells the complex story of racism from the point of view of the perpetrators. The result is an astonishing examination of the changes, complexities and difficulties at the heart of a multi-ethnic suburban community.’

‘A transcendent work, splitting open a family to bare the rough edges of prejudice, self-righteousness and petulant self-justification that we all recognise. The words of James Baldwin resonate throughout: “Books taught me that the things that tormented me the most were the things that connected me to everyone who was alive and who had ever been alive.’

‘Gee’s book is bold because of her willingness to write about the living, shifting present. An unashamedly contemporary novel – a millennium novel, if you like – that embraces the ideological and emotional chaos of our times. ‘

‘Skilful structure and tender, precise prose.’

‘Picking up where Toni Morrison leaves off, Gee reminds us that racism not only devastates the lives of its victims, but also those of its perpetrators. Like Eugene O’Neill, Maggie Gee moves skilfully between compassion and disgust.’

‘Elegant style and an expert ear for dialogue … courageous, honest, powerfully real and not a little disturbing.’

‘Full of good writing.’

‘Maggie Gee is one of our most ambitious and challenging novelists.’

‘
The White Family
is an audacious, groundbreaking condition-of-England novel which tilts expertly at a middle class fallacy that racism is something “out there”, in the football terraces or the sink estates … Finely judged and compulsively readable.’

‘Outstanding … tender, sexy and alarming.’ Jim Crace

‘A brilliant depiction of British society.’ Bernardine Evaristo