The 392

"It takes a group of people who are on a 392 bus on its maiden voyage through Hoxton. These are people from all walks of life. There are several Black characters, slightly fewer white characters. You can see the strategy there to give voice to Black experiences by a Black writer. One of the things I loved about this book was this use of different registers. So you get Natalie, who is 19; you can really hear her, she’s so vibrant and vivid, such a strong character. There are about 13 narrative voices, all telling their story. And yet every chapter is so economical, the whole novel is only about 120 pages. I really loved that there was a real disconnect between the way they were projecting themselves and the way they wanted to be. So a lot was about image, how you survive. You have to have a particular persona. It’s rough out there. And as we went through the streets on the bus, each character was observing the changes that were happening in London. All of them felt they were Londoners, even those who were the children of migrants. The majority were thinking, ‘I’m not sure I’m going to recognise my home soon, because it’s all being gentrified.’ There’s lots of talk about hipsters, the sorts of people coming into Hoxton and changing the landscape. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Natalie describes herself—very entertainingly—as the Queen of Hoxton. She sees herself as absolutely central to Hoxton. It’s very much a London novel. There’s a very strong sense of place coming through. And it seemed to me very contemporary, partly because of the use of idiom, the kind of contemporary London you see in grime. I could imagine Stormzy reading the book and enjoying it. As with the Bernardine Evaristo book, this novel has a real musicality to it, even though it’s not about music. I think that’s one of the ways that Black writers express themselves; music is culturally important. Many of us have always had music from Jamaica, or Africa, if that’s where our parents come from. So it offers a continuum, if you like, that we haven’t necessarily had through literature. It’s a hugely important form. The 392 is not overtly working with that, but I think it is implicitly. I didn’t consciously choose London novels. But that’s pretty much what they have in common. My own writing focuses on London as well, because I was brought up there, although I live in Manchester now. I think that’s a danger. We need to be hearing more from regional writers. I think white writing suffers from the same thing; it’s much harder to be published if you’re a regional writer, particularly if you have a regional voice and are not using standard English for whatever reason."