Suckerfish by Ashani Lewis
Ashani Lewis' highly atmospheric novel Suckerfish explores the tangled relationships between mothers and daughters
In Suckerfish, Ashani Lewis sketches out a stunning and heartbreaking mother-daughter relationship, turning over its many dark and light shades. As Kolia navigates her twenties in London, managing responsibilities to both people and places, seeking purpose and meditating on family attachments, her vulnerable and fierce mother Lalita tries desperately to claw her estranged daughter back into her orbit. We weave in and out of Kolia and Lalita’s pasts and presents as Lewis skilfully lays bare some of the emotional complexities which percolate between people who love one another but which can be so hard to put into words.
In London, Kolia spends time with best friend, Mia, and love interest, Gabriel. Each of Kolia’s relationships are in their own ways complicated, brilliant and achingly real. Suckerfish also picks at the experience of racial mixedness in the UK, exposing the simultaneous distance and closeness, visibility and opacity produced when one seeks to relate to a distant homeland. Briefly, readers follow Kolia in a visit to this (unnamed) homeland, although this part of the book feels a little rushed: more space in which Lewis’ many complex characters could breathe would have been welcome. Nevertheless, it is an exceedingly clever novel about love, inheritance and what we owe one another. Suckerfish will quietly rip at your heart and then gently stitch it back up again.
John Murray Press, 26 Feb