The House of Broken Bricks by Fiona Williams is a wonderful debut novel, that will pull at your heartstrings. It is about a biracial family couple and their twins. It tells their stories from each of their perspectives as they navigate their lives. It is superbly written, and gives an honest account of how difficult life can be for some families. It is an evocative read, beautiful, stunning, thought provoking and heart breaking, and one that will linger in my mind for some time.
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

If you are looking for a stunningly written debut, with amazing, deep characters, this is the one for you!

This book was so beautiful I couldn't put it down!

HIGHLIGHTS
- Multiple POV
- In dept characters
- Great writing
- Perfect pace for the story line.

Thank you for allowing me to review this book. I'm afraid that it took 2 attempts for me to really get into this book and finish it. I found the story moved painfully slowly due to the long descriptions. I found that I gad to scan through some of these.. The author described a family falling apart well but it wasn't really for me.

The House of Broken Bricks by Fiona Williams is a wonderfully told, unexpected story of a broken family. Parents Tess and Richard and their 'rainbow twins' Sonny and Max relocate from London to the country and whilst Richard tries to build his business, Tess misses her Jamaican family and the bustle of London. The story is told from all four perspectives and although not much happens, we get a window into their lives, their thoughts and their struggles, and glimpse the possibility of hope for the future. I really enjoyed the depth of this book and look forward to more from the author - what a debut!
With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a good summer read, although less propulsive than I was expecting. It’s more character driven, with really beautiful nature writing actually, another thing I wasn’t expecting.

Prose was wonderful, that was the highlight of this one for me. The other is that it doesn’t toy with the reader, or exploit you in that way some books do with cheap tricks or twists.

The reveal is earned and satisfying, but it’s a slower moving novel so just be prepared do that. I love a perspective change, and this was done really well - it kept things interesting and helped peel back those layers.

Poignant debut.

This is a story that revolves around a mixed race married couple and their young family. They live in the countryside and eke out a living from a small holding. There are subtle, and also not so subtle, experiences of racism and exclusion in village life, but there are warm and welcoming characters as well. It is not an immediately easy read as the story it is told in four parts as a first person narrative and individual perspective of each of the four family members. Tess, Richard, Sonny and Max each explain their experiences and feelings as they navigate what we come to realise has been a tragic time for them all. Ultimately it is a saga about love, loss and healing. It is beautifully told with an unexpected ending.

Both heartbreaking and heartwarming, a true gem of a book. Utterly beautiful. I hope this book does well. It's one that deserves to be cherished and savoured.

This is a beautifully written debut.

The Hembrys are a bi-racial family who live in an old English farmhouse on the Somerset Levels. Damp and mould permeate every crevice of the home. The father of the family has roots in the area that go back several generations and he loves the place. The mother, on the other hand, is a city girl, brought up in London, and of Jamaican descent. They have ten year old twins, two boys, Max, white like his father, and Sonny, black like his mother.

Tensions are running high in the home. Tess, the mother, despises life in the country. She is resentful of how she stands out as being different. Used to more acceptance in multi-cultural London, she also hates how her boys are treated due to their differences. Richard, the father, grows vegetables which he sells to surrounding stores and local people. He works every hour he can to make ends meet. Tess, too, works very hard, yet they seem to resent each other... the boys pick up on the tension in the home. It seems as though their family is now as broken as the bricks that make up their house. Max is having night terrors.

At around the forty percent mark in the novel, the author throws her readers a curve ball which turns everything on its head. This answers some questions, yet serves to create many, many more...

The pace is unhurried, the atmosphere bleak, yet the writing keeps you reading on. Will this broken, dysfunctional family survive?

Told via the perspectives of all four members of the family, the reader is made privy to the thoughts, hopes, worries, and emotions of each. Nature permeates the narrative, with the changing seasons and the repercussions of each.

A poignant story that deals with love, loss, heartbreak, and being different. A remarkable literary debut that I can easily recommend.

This is a lyrical book telling the story of the most difficult year in the life of a family alongside the changing seasons of their home next to a river. The interior heartbreak in each family member draws them steadily away from each other until we see slowly healing revealed in each individual and in the family as a whole. This novel examines themes of loss, nature, and community. It's slightly overwritten, but is tender and evocative and there is a good blend of beauty amongst the sadness.
This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

A previously happy, loving family now live in a crumbling home, one marred by tragedy and brokenness. Tessa finds herself completely adrift. She sees England, her husband Richard’s homeland, as increasingly unfriendly, cold and intolerable.

She feels like she doesn’t belong, so she yearns for the warm, welcoming and accepting culture of Jamaica, her country of origin, even though she’s never visited it but is convinced she’d be more at home there, and her mother wants to return to Jamaica too.

Richard busies himself in his market garden and hides his true feelings from everyone. He struggles to articulate his thoughts or talk at all, unless he really has to. Max, a non-identical-in-every-way rainbow twin, wishes he looked the same and acted more like his exuberant, nature-loving brother, Sonny.

As they seek to adjust to a new way of being, they mourn what they’ve lost and had before grief set in. We view their days from each character’s perspective. Max spends hours in Sonny’s company, which has been his usual custom since birth. He has lengthy conversations with him and feels buoyed by them.

Richard senses Sonny’s absence and misses him dreadfully, Tessa is so consumed with misery and pain that she looks for ways to escape. Sonny becomes a will-o-the-wisp presence and a healing force for his increasingly distant, wounded family.

Eventually, this house of broken bricks has new life breathed into it. The family’s crumbling edifice slowly gets cemented together again. They become stronger in the broken places and can grow more resilient in a future that offers hope for them.

If you enjoy brilliantly written, character driven novels with thoughtful, poetic prose, and a storyline that touches the heart, then you’ll love this novel like I did. Grateful thanks to Faber and Faber Ltd and NetGalley for the eARC..

Absolutely brilliant, loved it. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me an advance copy, I will definitely be recommending.

I absolutely loved the ending, I gasped in happiness multiple times, for a heartbreaking read, it was a lovely ending - I also liked how each person had a different writing style

It’s only the first week of January and already, I have a strong candidate for my book of the year.

This is the story of a family damaged by something they can’t yet talk about, even among themselves – Tessa, Richard and their very non-identical twin sons, Max and Sonny. The beautiful descriptions, stunning in their earthy details of the turn of the seasons in somewhere very rural, very English contrast with glimpses of south London and beyond it a Jamaican heritage our Tessa feels in her bones but has never really known.

As accurate and honest a description of looking different – whether it be with afro hair or an epicanthal fold – in a rural setting as I have read, I can’t recommend this heart breaking and ultimately hopeful story enough.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Tough Jamaican roots grow deep in English soil in this beautifully written fiction debut about a multicultural family reconnecting after a joined grief threatens to split them apart.

Meet the Hembry’s; a patchwork family of four, that may not seem to like they belong together upon first glance, but clearly had a tight and loving bond before tragedy struck. There’s Tess, of Jamaican heritage, struggling to find her footing in the cold English countryside. Yet she’s never been more unmoored than by the grief she’s suffered recently. There’s Richard; an Englishman of few words, who withdraws from the family to avoid painful memories. Then there’s the “rainbow twins”: who no-one believes to be actual twins due to their different appearance and skintone. Max, who takes after his father, and now often gets himself into trouble at school for running off with Sonny too much. And “golden-boy” Sonny; dreaming and ethereal, with his head in the clouds (or in his case: the nature around their house).
Although we don’t know the nature of the loss that befell the family, we feel its effects from page one. Through their four perspectives, we learn not only what happened in the past, but also how a broken family strives to become whole again.

There are books you read for their story, and there are books you read for the way that story is told. The House of Broken Bricks firmly falls into the latter category. Fiona Williams’ stunning nature-writing and poetic prose, turns a relatively simple story into a hauntingly beautiful experience, that actually managed to tuck on my heartstrings a bit.
First of all, the language on display is often just a joy to read by itself, although it might be a bit too much on the purple prose side, depending on your personal preferences. The book is populated by lush nature-imagery and gorgeously crafted sentences like:

“In the mellow heat, I feel myself expand so grief sinks into my marrow to become hard, as close to the underside of my skin as bone, yet soft, deep melding like the sinews that support my pelvis, which ease and stretch as I move about the house.”

In the wrong context, this can distract from the story and feel “overwritten”, but in this case it’s woven into the story so naturally, that it only enhances it.

Secondly, structurally, this book was really well crafted. It’s divided by fours in more ways than one. Each quarter of the book follows one of the four seasons in the English country-side, and each of these seasons reflects “a season” of the family’s journey.
Another way the story is split into fours is by its narrators: Tess, Richard, Sonny and Max all taking turns and revealing their part of the story. One of the hardest things to do for an author, is write multiple distinct narrative voices for their protagonists, but Williams nails that here. Without even reading the title-headers, I was able to easily decern who was talking, just by the language used, and how it fit the character.
Tess (who clearly suffers from a form of depression after what happened), fills her parts with a feeling of longing an melancholy. Sonny’s are almost dreamlike and filled with wonder about the world that surrounds him. Max’s are observant and matter-of-fact, whereas Richard’s (the only narrative told in 3rd person) feels distant, reflecting his literal withdrawal from the rest of the family.

Third and lastly; the reveal of the story feels inevitable in the best way possible. There are no cheap “twists”; that wouldn’t fit the story. Instead Williams slowly reveals what has already happened in a way that’s deeply bittersweet and memorable.

Fans of literary fiction with themes of family, grief and multicultural interest, who don’t mind their prose on the lyrical side, will devour this novel. I absolutely did.

Many thanks to Faber & Faber for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This is a beautiful book that I will be recommending all year.

This lyrical and multiple POV story checked all the boxes for me, the language was beautiful and the short chapters addictive and hard to put down since “one more chapter” wouldn’t be a long time investment.

I always enjoy a family dynamic story and the cover for this had me sold instantly and I enjoyed it so much that I will be getting a print copy to loan out and share with people.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for more from the author for sure!

The House of Broken Bricks is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.

Tess would prefer to live in London - there's a temptation to go back there, with the benefits pressed hard by her mother and her sister, Peaches. They tout the advantages, particularly after The Tragedy, and feel that it's unreasonable of Richard to expect Tess to stay. There's an underlying implication that she'd be free of the covert racism she encounters at home. They even have a partner lined up and a plan for her to continue her studies. What will Tess do? Could she move to London when nature-loving Max would feel that he was in alien territory and not just because of his colour?

The contrasts between London and the countryside are exceptionally well-written. I felt like I was walking the fields with Sonny and Max. The mud of the riverbank squelched between my toes. Sonny's keen on gardening: Richard had hopes that Sonny would follow him into the business but Max isn't interested at all. He's a pure naturalist but adrift, even in the countryside as his whiteness singles him out.

If you need a story with a strong plot, The House of Broken Bricks might not be the book for you. It's character-driven and we explore the effects of loss on the remaining family members. They're all thrown together in the remote rural setting that magnifies their problems.

I read the book slowly. I wanted to absorb it and days after I finished reading I'm still thinking about the individual members. Richard perhaps comes off the page less well than Tess, Sonny and Max - but that's me being very picky. It's a superb book and one to which I'll return. I might know what happens but there's such pleasure in the writing that I won't find that a problem.

I'd like to thank the publishers for letting Bookbag have a review copy.

"The House of Broken Bricks" is a captivating read that explores the lives of the four main characters and their attempt to come to terms with the tragic death of a child. The story is told from the viewpoints of the family members and explores the dynamics of their relationships and the process of grieving.
This is one of those books that stays with you long after you’ve finished reading it

I have reviewed The House of Broken Bricks by Fiona Williams for book recommendation and selling site LoveReading.co.uk. I’ve chosen the title as both a LoveReading Star Book and Liz Pick of the Month. Please see the link for the full review.

The vivid descriptions of the scenery really drew me into this book and the characters were diverse and interesting. Difficult to describe my feelings about this book without spoiling the latter part of it.
A compelling read.

This novel is, first and foremost, a fictional story about loss. Or to be more precise, about the loss of a much-loved twin boy. Yet follow the threads of fractured family life and you discover all the other themes that Fiona Williams weaves together here: remote ruralness, covert and open racism and local stereotypes, gender roles, sibling constellations, depression and the difficulties in keeping a marriage alive join the all-consuming theme of parental grief. The bereaved parent is Tess, who is mother to deceased Sonny and his twin brother Max. Told from the viewpoints of each family member, including the deceased Sonny who watches his parents and brother navigate their grief from afar, this is a story in the best of the magic realism genre that will leave you thinking long after you have devoured the last page. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC of this unique, moving book that allowed me to produce this unbiased book review.