Smallie

‘An enlightening and beautifully crafted story‘ JJ BOLA ‘What an electrifying and important debut. Every word is knife sharp, every emotion nuanced and every twist brilliantly turned . . . Should be at the top of everyone‘s 2026 Must Read list.‘ RACHEL JOYCE In 1961, 19-year-old Lucinda Brown travels to England in search of her lover, Clarence Braithwaite, a jazz musician who left Barbados to join the British army. Aboard the ship to Southampton, Lucinda meets Raldo, a free-wheeling Trinidadian, who offers her the wild freedom that both her old life in Barbados and the life that awaits her in Britain lack. Driven by loyalty, and the memory of the little boy she left behind, she chooses Clarence - though soon realises that he is no longer the saxophonist she fell in love with, but a veteran at war with himself. Fifty years later, Patrick Braithwaite, a father, husband, business owner and recovering alcoholic from Tottenham, has to rally his three siblings when their mother receives a letter from the Home Office that tears their life apart. They need to prove their mother‘s legal arrival, to prevent her deportation, and to do that they need to find a man their mother once loved, known only by the name of Raldo... Tender, rich and big-hearted, Smallie is a stunning British debut about three generations of a Bajan-British family affected by the Windrush scandal that will move, enrage and pull you in. *** ‘With Smallie, McKenzie-Goddard has achieved a paradoxical feat: making a singular type of pain feel indisputably collective without sacrificing each unique aspect of such a dangerous time in recent history. Emotive, careful and wearing, McKenzie-Goddard‘s grasp of language is just as strong as the effect this outstanding debut will have on every reader‘ Ore AGBAJE-WILLIAMS ‘Smallie reminds us of what it means to unite in powerlessness and how our futures often rest in the palms of the unjust. Told with stunning language and underlining the plight of the Windrush generation in the UK, this novel is one that will live with me indefinitely‘ ONYI NWABINELLI