October 30, 2023
A Cameroonian Dutch teen copes with pervasive racism and endures a stint in juvenile detention in Bekono’s arresting debut. Salomé Atabong enters the rehabilitation center after committing a for-now-unspecified violent act. She worries that her Cameroonian father will succumb to his cancer before she’s released in six months or that her headstrong sister will manage to flee their bigoted village in the Netherlands. At the facility, her simmering anger is agitated by having to work with a counselor who became infamous on a reality TV show for making racist comments. She spends the time mostly avoiding the others in her unit, reading the books her Dutch mom brings her, and combing through memories of her life before. Salomé’s sharp, voice-driven narration captures the tedium and frustrations of her sentence as well as the depth of her adolescent angst. The slow revelation of Salomé’s crime maintains tension throughout. The final act, which chronicles her release, interweaves her feelings, thoughts, and memories from before and during her incarceration to skillfully portray the difficulty of returning to life on the outside. This one’s hard to put down. Agent: Lisette Verhagen, PFD Literary.