Set in a West Country farming village, The House of Broken Bricks lays bare the complexities of day-to-day life for a mixed-race family. Tess is a Londoner whose relationship with Richard transports her to a creaking house on a floodplain where no one looks like her. While Tess and Richard settle into the village rhythm, the dramatic arrival of their twin sons recasts the family dynamic, stirring up complicated feelings and questions of belonging.
Accomplished ... The House of Broken Bricks is a tender and powerful novel, all the more profound for its apparent simplicity, and establishes Williams as an exciting and original new voice.
[Williams] uses first-person narration for everyone except Richard, whose story is told in the third person. This amplifies the sense of discord between him and Tess, which works well as a narrative device but makes it harder to connect with Richard ... Williams’s writing is richly atmospheric ... But she forgets you can have too much of a good thing, overdoing the figurative language.
The first third of the novel drags at times ... Richard is the novel’s weakest link, which is a shame because the end of the story hinges on his action. The resolution offered, while superficially heart-warming, feels a little mechanical; we never really see into his soul ... That said, this is an affecting debut from a talented new writer.
