In this forthright, agonisingly compelling semi-autobiography, penned by the son of a black African-Caribbean father and a white English mother, five decades of family struggle are unravelled. Often emotionally charged and unsentimental, the many vicissitudes in the childhood journey of Willson, the strange fruit born of this racial mixing, are examined and contextualised. The tale that emerges, one of seemingly omnipotent adversity, is a collage of hope, aspiration, and parental love spanning life in 1950s London into the new millennium. It is a striking portrait of impressions and memories of life in modern Britain. The reader will be confronted and uplifted, may wince, even cheer as this painfully angry yet forgiving, challenging yet inspiring narrative explores universal human concepts of family, child development, teenage delinquency, race, and ancestry in our rapidly evolving world.

By J W Vimikh