This book is officially my best book of 2018. So far. It manages to explore experiences that are completely unknown to me alongside others that are familiar.
Primarily it is a book about relationships. Different types of friendship, relationships of obligation, romantic relationships, family relationships. It looks at how lines can blur, how secrets and shame impact on relationships, and how new opportunities can change our place in our own world.
I found it utterly fascinating, and I loved the complexity of the characters, particularly Belinda, the central character. I found her relationships as a house girl and the insight into Ghanaian culture so interesting and loved that those issues were combined with the aspects of life we would expect in a book about young women.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It’s not earth-shattering and there really aren’t any tense highs (or lows), but to be honest, I’m starting to enjoy this kind of book a lot more than the other kind.

I enjoyed the technically similar, but conflicting characters of Belinda and Amma; two young women of a similar age, from (in some ways) the same place with completely different experiences, thoughts and ways of moving through life. I found the development of their friendship and the way they interacted (and initially danced around each other) quite realistic - no doubt a result of Donkor’s experiences as a teacher.

The main complaint I think I have is that I found the writing quite ‘crowded’, for want of a better word, like a lot more was being described as happening, than actually was. At times it felt busier, when really just a short sentence would have sufficed to describe a situation, conversation or movement. I was quite often thrown out of the story trying to simplify what exactly was happening at certain moments.

I was kind of disappointed by what felt like a non-committal ending, which I think gave the characters other than Belinda a disservice- particularly Amma. But for the most part, It was just nice to read a story of two young, black girls (and their family) predominantly from a U.K. (I.e not American) perspective, and that wasn’t explicitly about ‘The Black Experience’, suggesting that it is always only about ‘struggle’ or a singular, fixed thing.

A very interesting yet busy novel. One with an interesting premise, as I love experiencing my own country through foreign eyes, and particularly through the yes of young children. How would a young girl from rural Ghana deal with coming to London. Even people from the North of England sometimes find it overwhelming (or is that just me) so my interest was peaked early on. Add this to a plot of a coming of age story and there is a lot to delve into.

A great book for a book club - issues of race, identity and more fight with each other on the pages. Realistically sounding language and conversations add further authenticity to the plot. It did jar at times though and spoilt the rhythm of my reading - there is a helpful guide however so I would advise you read this first. Having said that, the dialogue in London also suffered for me.

I also found the writing itself unravelled some of the goodness I’ve mentioned though as certain bits of the book, sections of one event for example, seemed to drag and take away my interest for a while. I found I learned more about Belinda and I was left wanting to know more about Amma.

Having said that, this really is a novel to sink your teeth into, take time with and you will reap the rewards. Fascinating insight into a new culture and perhaps your own through fresh eyes. The girl’s friendship goes through some heartbreaking and heartwarming changes and I loved walking beside them finding out more about two remarkable girls with their unique and challenging mix of cultures, problems, growing up issues and more.

An insightful read about two very distinct cultures - Ghanian and British, wrapped in a story of so much more with characters who complement each other so well.

A wonderful story about Belinda a girl brought up in Ghana in a troubled environment but then becomes a house girl in Duban also in Ghana where she is joined by a younger girl Mary who she has to train up. Mary is like the sister she never had and being servants they have to share a bed which is strange to both when they first meet. However after six months Belinda gets sent to London in England to help with Amma a teenager who Is coming off age and trying to figure out who she is and how her life should be. London is a big shock to the system for Belinda but she takes, actually I better let you read the book before I give anything more away.
This is defiantly a five star book and one that is hard if not impossible to put down, there are a number of twist and surprise that you won't see coming which is so true to life. I enjoyed the way Michael shows the difference of the culture with out taking anything away or distracting from the plot. I loved this book and hope you will as well.
I have been given a free copy of this book from NetGalley in return for a honest review.

When I first saw the synopsis of Hold, Michael Donkor's debut novel, not to mention its beautiful cover, I immediately knew I'd want to read this book. Belinda, an obedient and dutiful house-girl in Kumasi, is summoned to London at the behest of the family she works for to deal with a disobedient relative, Amma. Amma, born in London to Ghanaian parents, seems to be going off the rails; but nobody knows that this is because she's struggling with her own sexuality. Belinda has to navigate this new and confusing metropolis while missing her younger friend Mary, whom she worked alongside in Kumasi, and whose rebellious nature both bothered and amused her. As Belinda and Amma move from mutual dislike and incomprehension to the beginnings of a friendship, they both realise that there's more to the other one than meets the eye.

Hold is at its best when exploring how foreign London looks through Belinda's eyes, and how strange and archaic Belinda's world seems to Amma. It's set in 2002, so even readers who know south London well will feel a little off-kilter, and Donkor does a good job of recalling the teenage experience at the turn of the millennium (I'm not a Londoner, but I was only a few years younger than Amma in 2002!) The exoticising conventions of Western fiction about Africa, with their detailing of 'unusual' practices and customs, are turned on their head as Belinda explores the local area:

Belinda walked just behind Nana as they made their way along noisy Brixton High Road... The sky was bored, the traffic was angry. Everything around them beeped or screamed... Three striped white vans with swirling blue lights moaned. Buses bent round corners looking like sick caterpillars. Both Nana and Belinda were careful to avoid stubby black bins that choked on packets and bottles, and that made Nana hiss 'Lambeth Council' like those words were bad kenkey on her tongue. A tall man with wheels on his shoes sailed  through it all peacefully... On her left... a group of children played silver drums... Two women with flopping hats stopped to dance in front of the band, wiggling their bottoms and holding their breasts.

As Belinda gets to know Amma better, Amma brings her along to a party, where she observes what's going on in similarly anthropological terms: 'A white boy with dreadlocks ... hooked his fingers into the belt loops of a girl's jeans. He pulled her towards him. The girl didn't mind, even though she stumbled because the rug bunched under her... They both started attacking with tongues and lips.'

There's great material here about race - Amma's experiences as a black girl in Brixton versus Belinda's navigation of her identity as a Ghanaian woman - and about sexuality and its intersection with ethnicity and culture.

However, I found Hold to be a laborious read, largely because of Donkor's writing. As the long passage above indicates, his prose tends to be a bit convoluted, whether he's writing from Amma's point of view or Belinda's. Dialogue is a particular problem. To an extent, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one; the Ghanaian characters living in Kumasi are obviously speaking with a very distinctive rhythm, mixing English and Twi, and it's not possible for me to make any judgment about the authenticity of this kind of speech. But unfortunately, although his London teenagers have different speech patterns, I encountered many of the same issues with their dialogue. Here's Amma talking to her friend Helena:

"And now for that promised hashy hash." Helena stopped to change the CD from De La Soul to Bob Dylan, wiped her hands on her faded T-shirt with Babar on it, then reached for the wooden pipe to her left and tapped ash from its bowl. She wrestled with her pockets. "The dark cloud hasn't, like, lifted then, ma petite soeur?" Helena said, peering into the retrieved baggie.

"What?"

"Obviously I'm talking about how you've been Lily Long Face all afternoon."

"You told me I should "do pensive", so I'm doing - "

" - And what about how dry you were at Max's? Mmm? I needed you there, man."

"I was there."

"Come on, Am. Support was required. Lavender needed controlling. She's becoming a real joke. It's like she's forgotten that she's actually, er, supposed to be a feminist?"

Donkor seems to be trying to approximate a distinctive mix of popular private-school phrases (the use of French) alongside teenage girls' tendency to uptalk and add filler words alongside fake street slang ('man' and 'dry'), and for me, it's just too much, all at once. Despite the attempt at authenticity and the thought that's gone into these girls' mixed linguistic influences, he's ended up with something that doesn't sound like a conversation anybody would actually have. Moreover, there's simply too much going on in this scene - the 'period' details with the CDs and Babar, the fact that we have to follow this conversation with few dialogue tags when the girls are talking about something we don't know about beforehand - and, like the longer descriptive passages in the book, it ends up feeling cluttered.

My other issue with Hold was the structure. The novel moves between Amma and Belinda's narratives, but we get about two-thirds Belinda to one-third Amma, and I would have preferred a more equal distribution. By the end of the book, I felt that Amma's struggle with her lesbianism had been short-changed and unresolved, and much of the more interesting material in her story was still to come. In contrast, Belinda's character arc feels painfully small given her page-space, although, as I said above, she's a great observer. There's such huge potential here, for both plot and character, but I ended up feeling very disappointed.

Hold is a moving, funny, and sad novel about friendship, shame, forgiveness, and growing up, that is set between Ghana and London. The protagonist is Belinda, a housegirl who moved from her village to Kumasi when the chance came. She works alongside Mary, a spirited eleven-year-old who became the sister Belinda never had, until Belinda is summoned to London to try and bring Amma out of her shell. Amma is a straight-A student who lives in south London with her Ghanian parents, but recently she has started to seem different to them, moody and uncommunicative. They hope that Belinda will be a good example on Amma, but Amma doesn’t want to be friends at first. And when they do start to get along, their own secrets might pull them apart again.

Belinda’s perspective is distinctive and holds the novel together as she discovers new ways to think and thinks back on the past. Donkor combines this with smaller parts from Amma’s perspective, which shows the differences in their lives and points of view and also how their friendship grows slowly. The way Donkor writes their friendship—how it is forced upon them, but also becomes more natural, something of a give and take—is crucial to the novel, which is full of different comparisons.

This is a multi-faceted novel with engaging and memorable characters, and vivid locations including a recognisably local south London centred around Brixton, Herne Hill, and Streatham. It is a story about growing up and coming of age across different cultures and positions in society, but also in relation to shame, sexuality, and grief. Hold is an exciting debut that combines gripping characters with vivid description to create a coming-of-age story with fresh perspectives.

Struggled to get into this one. To quite sure what didn’t connect for me.

This is quite a debut! Michael Donkor covers a lot of ground in this immersive tale of Belinda the Ghanaian housegirl who moves to London to be a calming influence on Amma the daughter of an expatriate family whose lack of connection to their culture and thoroughly western mindset is driving her parents to distraction. Donkor addresses the problems adapting to a culture as a stranger, whether it is an entirely new world as London is to Belinda or something born to but never fundanentally experienced as Ghana is to Amma.

These two main characters play off eachother perfectly, bringing their different strengths and weaknesses to light; Amma's privilege and self-centredness, Belinda's conservatism and meekness. Both have huge strength and heart and each allows the other to come to terms with their own struggles. But Donkor also tackles the station of Ghanaian women, British racism, homophobia with tact and skill. Most impressively he has written a novel fully peopled with sensitively-rendered, whole, layered women brimming with vices and voices. They live on the page in the penetrating descriptions of Ghana and Britain which are rendered both strange and familiar by gazes of the characters.

Funny, insightful, immersive, Hold tugs on all of the emotions and has more than enough intellect to balance out all that heart