Steve Tasane

Walker Books

9781406344059

October 2013

paperback

Finished

I read the start of this book with some excitement. Marshall O’Connor, a character with anger issues, lives in a high-rise known as the Finger. His dad’s in prison.

I love what Tasane has done with the narrative voice in this novel, giving Marshall a truly convincing and highly effective street lingo. Here’s a paragraph from the first page:

I’m already sore at my boy Mustaph ‘cos he don’t ever do nothin’ but sleep, see? I think he sufferin’ from bein’ sad, ‘cos he spend half his life in bed, and it all wrong ‘ cos we be fifteen which is the primetime, yeah? We be hittin’ on girls and playin’ our beats and footie and crazy stuff on computer, but only if ol’ Mustaph can drag his dozy head out from under his duvet – that boy win Olympic Gold for sleepin’.

That’s good and Tasane carries it off throughout the length of the novel. It really is a strong voice and carries the novel in the way that Huck’s voice carries Huckleberry Finn. Marshall himself, his home circumstances and the whole ambience of The Finger are so much more interesting than the Giant Bug Attack horror story the book turns into. Yes, Tasane carries it off with gusto (as you would expect from a performance poet) and I am sure there are readers who will savour the scenes towards the end of the novel, but they left me regretting the way sensational fantasy had smothered the very real emotional, social and domestic drama established at the start of the book.

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