The Rest of You

Blue follows Bad Love with an affecting tale of a British Ghanaian woman’s buried trauma. By day, 30-year-old London massage therapist Whitney Appiah relieves the psychic pain lodged in her clients’ muscles, but at night she is haunted by nightmares triggered by faint memories of something sinister she experienced at age three in Kumasi, Ghana, leading up to her father’s death. Her aunt said her father died from a disease and whisked her away to London to raise her (her mother had died in childbirth), but the truth, which her fractured memories circle around, comes out later. Whitney’s avoidant nature is brought into stark relief after her ex-lover rapes her and she chooses not to tell anyone or press charges. As the narrative shifts between contemporary London and mid-1990s Ghana, Blue skillfully contrasts the dialect and customs of Whitney’s traditional Ghanaian family with her current life of clubbing and eating takeaway with her roommate, Chantelle, and her Malaysian Australian friend, Jak, who is nonbinary. Whitney’s character develops after Chantelle breaks up with her abusive boyfriend, jolting Whitney into recognizing the truth about her father’s death and other painful moments from her early childhood. This powerful story of friendship, sisterhood, and resilience will linger in readers’ minds. (Oct.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review confused some of the background details of the characters Chantelle and Jak.