First book I've read off the 2024 Canada Reads long list, and it's a bit of a let down. I think most speculation I've seen includes this as a pick for the short list, and I just don't think the quality is there.

It follows a group of women in a Black neighbourhood in Vancouver, B.C., in the 1920s and 1930s, primarily a young aspiring artist and her alcoholic single mother. It's meant as a love letter to a neighbourhood the city destroyed, and to Black solidarity, but themes really work better if they're not repeatedly stated in the text. The writing generally felt pretty shallow, with a lot of telling us what the characters felt, and explicitly drawing conclusions that felt obvious to me. I also found the language quite modern in a way I couldn't entirely put my finger on, and didn't think it had a very strong sense of time and place because of it.

All of the chapters were a few pages long, and each divided into a past tense regular narrative followed by a present tense (and sometimes first person) impressionistic/emotional response. The latter where they focused on the main character's painterly view of the world were probably the strongest part writing, and I wish the whole book had been more like that.