Acquire Today Who They Was Engineered By Gabriel Krauze Disseminated As EReader Version
So lyrical and poetic but it normalises violence and drugs, . .
In full
Fiction or nonfiction this is Snoopz's story, This is the name that Gabriel uses in his life on the streets and in the gangs in London, That life consists of crime, drugs, friends, girls and, slightly surprisingly, his time at uni doing his English degree, It's violent and at times unpleasant knives are normal, guns sometimes, The police, courts and prison make appearances, It is not a "pretty" story, it's visceral and edgy,
As an old person it took me a little while to get into the language being used here, There were a lot of words I didn't know or in some cases didn't make sense in the way they were used, "Food" means something very different to me than it does to Snoopz and the gangs culture of South Kilburn! This is so far from the world that is usual to me.
. . If you do find you can get the language you are in for an interesting journey,
I guess I'm conflicted here, This story effectively glorifies violence, crime and drugs "things" are simply something to be taken from others whatever it costs, It certainly shows young men seeing women as objects, So far so bad However the writing and the power of the stories are remarkable, The tension between rivals gangs or people is tangible and quite scary, The sheer drive to rob, use women, get possessions and in this case to get an English degree come over so strongly, Living and the obvious but usually ignored possibility of dying makes for something that is very vivid,
For me the star aspect of this is the writing, Once you get into it if you can it is stunning for me, Most of it has a real lyricism, Parts of it are wonderfully poetic, I found myself wishing I had thought of some of the lines in it, It makes for a convincing but troubling read, I'm left with the feeling that Gabriel was probably a good boy Snoopz is definitely not, However, good or bad, it comes over as something very real indeed, I certainly have no regrets about reading this,
Note I received an advance digital copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair review
Theres a lot to admire about Krauzes debut the opening chapter is one of the most immersive pieces of writing Ive ever read.
The prose is at times searing, brutal, and has an authenticity to it that reminded me of A Brief History of Seven Killings, And then theres Krauzes personal story how does a man go from the life he describes to a Booker Prize nominee Its an impressive transformation.
And yet in the end Who They Was was an uneven and frustrating read for me,
After the explosive introduction I felt a little let down during passages that seemed to drag, were overly descriptive, repetitive how many times was the smoking of a joint mentioned and somehow detached given the subject matter.
Ive since read an interview with Krauze and my interpretation is that the detachment was intentional, He meant to convey that it was just his day to day life, business as usual, nothing to get het up about, I respect that decision and yet it led me to feeling disconnected from his character,
An added difficulty for a person who doesnt often warm to nonfiction was that it read quite like a memoir, For some that will be a selling point, but for me it made for a dulling experience, Still, there were flashes of brilliance amidst the tedium, and Im looking forward to what Krauze writes next,.
Krauze's Who They Was is the final novel in my Bookerread through, it's longlisted but didn't make the shortlist,
A fascinating first person account of brutal ganglife on the streets and South Kilburn public housing tower blocks of London, It has a gritty authenticity with the street dialects, the speech rhythms and the matter of fact accounts of violent crime, including knifings and robberies with assault.
The novel is filled with mostly young men including the narrator Gabriel Snoopz and his partners in crime Gotti, Capo, Dario, Rex and others as they seek to make a name for themselves and earn respect as violent gang members.
They steal and deal drugs, spend time in prison, get out and repeat, fight to assert their street cred and so on, There's passsages that describe Gabriel's relationship with his long suffering family, especially his mother and father, His family background is not one of abject poverty and Krauze, interestingly, does not use Gabriel's background to justify his taste for this gang life.
The Who They Was's strength is its resolute refusal to moralise this life by the narrator reaching ethical insight about the pain his crime sprees inflict.
Instead Snoopz very much stares down readers' desire for such insight or resolution and offers up an account of this life as outside the norms of mainstream society and that has its own rules: rules for survival and rules for maintaining credibility.
It's very much a novel about young masculinised street gang cultures and written from within that culture with no apologies or excuses, While I admire this, it's supported by excellent writing and voice, I'm not entirely convinced,
"I'm tapping the zoot to pack the weed and baccy down tap tap tap so it's nice and tight, and it hits me how I don't want an easy and boring life.
I want to run from the law and feel my hearbeat making me sick, I want to fuck gyal like it could be my last night on earth, I want to see fear in people's eyes and eat my own fear, I want to live dangeoursly, on the edge of existence, "
It's all about celebrating the extreme experience of the adrenaline fueled moment, While out considering the next crime: ", . . I notice how detached this whole moment is from ordinary life, as if time don't exist for us right now, cars full of ordinary people leading ordinary lives passing us, oblivious to the fact that we're about to change the rhythm of someone's existence.
We're in a computer game, Fuck it, we're in GTA, Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. "
In the midst of this bravado that comes through in the writely voice I have a sense that while Krauze lived this most certainly auto fiction, he's 'slumming it' to some extent.
He is well educated and in the novel completing a degree in English Literature, Gabriel attends classes and lectures, He rather naively as many male arts undergrads do goes through his Nietzsche adoration phase, There are a few rinse and repeat passages in which Gabriel reflects on Nietzsche's morality as a way of framing or understanding the gang life and its moral codes.
Again I'm not convinced. These passages felt a little lazy and trite, It's like celebrating the violence and amorality of ganglife as a way of rubbing mainstream society's face in it: 'This is us and fuck you'.
Thing is that kid would not have read just Nietzche, and all those other aspects of his education that would perhaps ethically question his violent choices are given no room in this book.
There's no grappling with how his education might rub against or question his gang life, There's almost a wilful refusal in the book to have that encounter, although the stage is set for it,
While I admire the Who They Was's brash assertion of this culture and almost narrative refusal to back down in terms of ethical accountability for its central character's violent choices, it also doesn't entirely convince me.
At its best Who They Was provides a gritty, wellwritten account of ganglife from deep within that consciousness and subcultural experience, Nevertheless, I'm not convinced by this narrator's refusal to question the ethics of it, There is a sense at moments he's about to, especially in the closing sections when Gabriel realises that all this is a dead end, there is no winning at this life.
But for me that just squibs any coming to terms with the costs and accountability for the choices he has made and for me this is also a narrative choice that has ethical implications.
Gabriel Krauze's Who They Was opens with the first person narrator, also called Gabriel Krauze, together with his friend Gotti, violently assaulting a woman, on her doorstep, in front of her son, to steal her Rolex and diamond ring.
And were still tryna tear the watch off and suddenly Gotti turns round and bangs the womans son in the face onetime and the boy drops and Gotti slams the door shut and were alone with her again.
And I clock shes got a big diamond ring on her wedding finger and I try to pull it off but its not moving, the skin all bunches up and it hurts her and I cant twist it off because she has a wedding band on the same finger in front of the diamond ring, basically blocking it.
So I snap her finger back, it folds straight over so the tip touches her wrist in one go and its strange because I always thought that if you break someones finger youll actually feel the bones break, hear it even, but I dont feel anything at all, its like folding paper, as if the finger was naturally supposed to bend back like that and shes screaming to me take it just take it.
The narrator then tells us:
And this is the thing, theres no remorse, I dont feel any remorse, Gotti doesnt feel any remorse, and its not because were evil or any basic moral bullshit like that.
The thing is I dont actually feel anything about it at all, She defo doesnt spend a second thinking about individuals like me, about what its like to be me, She doesnt care about me and I dont care about her,
The novel puts us in the mind of an amoral although I actually think evil would be justified protagonist, perhaps an estate version of American Psycho, which makes for an interesting character study but a very unpleasant read and a not terribly literary one.
The narrator comes from a white Polish background, and a seemingly relatively respectable family, but has consciously opted into a life of drugs, crime and gang violence on the Soutk Kilburn estate, although one that he lives in parallel with studying English at university.
The bulk of rest of the book consists of repetitive chapters which each run along following lines,
open with literary quote Nietzche a favourite
go to university lectures on literature, mainly to eye up the female students, but intervening to make a remark that shows how much cleverer he is than the other students
sleep with one of the female student, who is amazed at how well endowed he is
go back to the estate and stab someone
take some drugs
sleep with another girl, who is also extremely impressed by his virility
violently assault a lawabiding woman in the street to steal her watch/ring, ideally breaking some bones
justify above by reference to Nietzche/Machivelli etc
rinse and repeat, almost to the point of selfsatire.
Im getting ready to bill a zoot and I clock that Gotti must have been bunning bare cro since theres only about six zeds left of the nine that we got when we done the move on that shotter in Willesden Green.
I aint even had time to smoke that much since Ive had bare essays to do for uni, My ps are starting to run low as well coz Im always getting takeaways and buying fresh pairs of creps, Im gonna have to shot that cro soon and since Gottis bunned most of it, he better not try gwan like were splitting it fiftyfifty.
I bill a zoot and try not to think,
One of the Who They Was's key themes seems to be how little this world is understood by most of those who live in London, and that somehow this justifies violently intruding on their lives:
Its mad how you can live in a city and never see any of this.
Or you just see faint smudges of it every now and again around the edges of your existence but even then you dont fully believe in it, because even though we live in the same city, where Im from and where youre from could be two totally separate worlds.
Like say you hear about a shooting on a street you walk down every day on your way to work its a shocking oneoff occasion, a rarity, something to talk about, and every single violent incident that you hear of or read about becomes a oneoff, or at least a surprise or a shock.
But to others these incidents are just the punctuation of their reality,
As a fictional character study this could be, as mentioned, be perhaps an interesting, if very unpleasant read, But this actually seems closer
to memoir than fiction, the author telling us in the afterword "everything in this book, in this story, was experienced in one way or another otherwise I wouldnt be able to tell it", and the biography on the Booker website explaining the author "was personally heavily involved in gangs, drugs, guns, stabbing and robbery all while completing an English degree at Queen Marys University".
Which leaves me with both an unpleasant feeling reading his work, but also exacerbates one of the Who They Was's biggest weaknesses, in that it makes no real attempt to explain why the protagonist made the bad choices that he did in the afterword the author can only explain this is the life I chose.
Maybe I was looking for a sense of family and identity that I couldnt find at home, I can see that it was cathartic for the author to write it, but I am less clear what I gained from reading it.
Overall, I must admit to suffering a complete empathy failure with this one for more generous reviews read those by my brother Gumble's Yard sitelink goodreads. com/review/show and my GR friend Neil sitelink goodreads. com/review/show but for me a book I found extremely unpleasant, one that even made my angry, and not a book I feel the Booker judges should have recognised.
.rounded up toas clearly others have seen something else in this book,
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC, .