The Dirty South by Alex Wheatle

Administrator — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:12:31 +0000

This is an excellent novel by Alex Wheatle. Dennis Huggins lives in one of the more bourgeois streets of Brixton, and his parents, unlike many of his peers’, are still together. His parents also have good jobs, especially his mother, who works as a legal secretary. However, his father is crippled due to a violent incident from his youth, and Dennis is fascinated by the idea that his father may have been a gangster. Although Dennis’s home background has set him far in advance of his peers at school, he does get bored very quickly by the very limited lessons that are provided at his school, and mucks around while the other students struggle. Dennis’s father has ambitions of him becoming a professor, although Dennis is put off by his nagging, but it appears that his sister Davinia has picked up the academic gene. Not sharing his father’s vision, Dennis leaves school to become a drug dealer, although he does also work in a garage. He and his best friend, Noel, shun hard drugs, and learn to avoid selling to other black men, as this is too risky. However, it’s not all doom and gloom for Dennis, as he sets his heart on the beautiful and articulate Akeisha. Yet the pervading ghetto culture that surrounds him very much influences the way that he treats women, to detrimental effect… Although Dennis would appear to have more choices than his best friend Noel, he doesn’t choose to leave the path that he has always followed, despite being on the receiving end of a violent beating due to it. One of the main themes in the novel is how the culture in Brixton is very much changing, as the local community gradually transforms from being West Indian in character, to African Muslim. Dennis is amazed to see how many Christian peers from his schooldays have taken up Islam, seemingly as a way of rebelling, even although they don’t appear to be all that popular within the local Muslim culture either. Despite their religious conversions, Dennis’s Muslim peers are just as in thrall to the power of money as he, which sets them on course for a very violent confrontation… Alex Wheatle is a very accomplished writer indeed, although it was a bit cheeky of him to include his MC alter ego, Yardman Irie, in the novel! All in all, The Dirty South is a truly brilliant novel told in the Brixton vernacular. The Dirty South very much makes me want to hunt down Wheatle’s previous books, especially since the events of East of Acre Lane seem to have been referred to.

authortrek.com » The Dirty South by Alex Wheatle review

The Dirty South by Alex Wheatle