An Olive Grove in Ends

McKenzie’s beautiful debut, set in a predominantly British Jamaican neighborhood of Bristol, England, exhibits both a tenderness for the residents and an unflinching examination of their struggles. Sayon Hughes has fantasized since he was a child about owning a house outside the city. Despite early academic promise, Sayon has grown disillusioned after his school years with the almost impossible project of saving enough money through legitimate means, so, like several of his former classmates and relatives, he’s turned to dealing drugs. Then, Sayon kills a man who is assaulting his cousin Cuba. Wracked with guilt and the fear that his longtime girlfriend, Shona Jennings, will split if she finds out, he tries to go straight, moving into Shona’s parents’ house, only to encounter hypocrisy and cruelty from her pastor father. Questions of faith and its manifestations predominate in the novel’s second half, as Sayon grapples with whether to remain in the Christian church of his youth or to start anew with Islam. McKenzie renders the neighborhood’s rich and complicated social and familial networks as a study in contrasts, where violence and betrayal coexist with generosity and kindness. It’s a gorgeous debut that nurtures an unlikely sort of hope that’s predicated on countless losses. (May)