Item: The Black and White Museum
Rating: 3.50
Author: bookstagramofmine

by Ferdinand Dennis

From Ferdinand Dennis, the critically acclaimed author of the novel Duppy Conqueror, comes The Black and White Museum, a collection of both highly personal and universal short stories. These at their heart reveal the emotional drama of faded love, the loss of individual and shared memory and the wistful longing for home. His stories powerfully portray the black presence in post-Windrush London, with its hurtling gentrification and everyday racism. Ferdinand's characters gain wisdom and maturity with age but become powerless, as they are less able to change the course of their lives. For some there is the temptation of a return "home" but home, like London, has also moved on and is not the paradise of their memories.
'I first encountered the short story form during my West London Comprehensive schooldays in Doris Lessing's Nine African Short Stories. Since then I have devoured short stories from de Maupassant, Joyce, Somerset Maugham, Flannery O'Connor, Marquez, John Cheever and William Trevor, as well as collections from the Caribbean, North and South America and Britain'. Ferdinand Dennis

Thank you Random Things Tours for the chance to read and review this!

This was an interesting set of short stories to unpack, although I must admit that I hadn’t heard of this author before I requested this book!

Each story deserves to be analysed on it’s own, with each set of characters so very different but also struggling with the desire to belong to someone or something. The opening story, ‘The Black and White Museum‘ set the tone for the book, with ‘Knock and Wait‘ my second favourite. I felt awful for the mother in ‘Only for a While‘ and it made me think of how we see so many elderly relatives being treated even now.

Reading updates

4 December, 2021: Started reading

7 December, 2021: on page 0 out of 208 0%

8 December, 2021: Finished reading

7 December, 2021: Reviewed