“Tonight, out means acknowledging that, for a sound to resonate, for us to hear it, it has to make physical contact with us, which is perhaps why the deep rumble of a bassline moves us so. Tonight, I might slap an open palm against the wall, might let my body bend to the bassline, like prostrating to something Godlike, something honest. Tonight, I might find my faith again, I might believe. And if it’s going to happen, it will be where I know myself best: in the moments just before a beat drops, having been teased slowly for what feels like hours, beautiful chords sneaking through the mud of percussion, anticipation at its height, my eyes closed in reverence of this moment, gratitude that I could be taken that high, that I might scrape heaven with my outstretched hands. And it’s not just me; catching another in the same motion, we might be drawn together, drawing so close our heads might touch, two Black crowns in the dim light of this ecstasy. Tonight, out means I’m content to stay in that space, just before the drums drop, in that moment where anything might be possible. So when Nam asks me if I’m coming out tonight, the answer can only be, ‘Of course.’.”
Occasionally there are writers where it feels like the most useful review is just a cluster of quotes, because surely, surely, anyone reading this prose will just want to go and read a whole book of it. Nelson writes with such life and rhythm he stops your breath as you read. Many of his best lines are repeated like a chorus, so that the feeling of the reading has that comfort and release of dancing to a familiar beat, moving in sync with yourself, in a community of others.
It isn’t just dancing that Nelson resurrects on the page. The Small Worlds of the title refers to the communities that we create, the small worlds of friends and family that, Nelson implies, are the stages that matter to our lives. And he starts with the glorious world of teenage love, the dizzying intensity of connection played out against summers of beaches, drinking nights and music. Over three years, he charts the nervous descent into adulthood for a generation who feel the burden of parental expectations that can’t be met, and the impossibility of explaining it is the bigger worlds, not the smaller ones, which have changed in ways that make these expectations impossible. This isn’t just any story of youth, he charts the impacts of colonialism and racism, the lost worlds and those regained, and the ways in which joy becomes defiant in the face of systemic barricades. Nelson writes youth so well, and smartly here, uses stories within stories, to make the older characters own youth sing to us, shading the worlds of their children.
Nelson’s stories richly explore family, what it is to be British-Ghanaian, love and music in ways that are thought-provoking and yes, to be twee, wise. But it is the language, and the ways that he makes that dance, which will pull me back to anything at all he writes. Because it is simply such joy to read, and to be reminded of what a thing it can be to be young.