‘In December, 1987, a few weeks before my twenty-fifth birthday, I settled into my seat for my flight to Kingston, Jamaica. As the stewardess smiled and checked my seat belt, I still hadn’t decided if I should embrace my father or kill him.’
So begins Alex Wheatle‘s A Rage Explained. To find out how this conflict resolves you’ll have to listen to the piece. But it isn’t just about father-son dynamics but a wider tale about identity, in which Alex, born and raised in South London, visits Jamaica for the first time. The sights, sounds and smells of that first exposure to the land of so many of his heroes are brilliantly evoked. And reader Anthony Welsh does a fine job in bringing out the mix of wonder, anger and confusion at the heart of the piece.
A Rage Explained was due to broadcast this afternoon, but has since been moved (see below) to accommodate a tribute to the late William Trevor. But it’s already online and available to listen to NOW on the BBC website.
Last week, Alex won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2016 for his YA novel Crongton Knights (there’s a good piece about Alex here). But he’s also written adult novels such as East Of Acre Lane and has been a DJ and a performance poet. As such, he is not easily labelled. Neither is this piece: strictly speaking it’s autobiography, but it’s constructed like a well-crafted short story. Or is it ‘creative non-fiction’?.
Personally, I’ve never been that bothered about labels: I would just listen and enjoy.
geezerinhat 