About to Fall Apart

Reviewed by Dymphna Crowe

Ashley Hickson-Lovence (Faber& Faber: 2026) 

Ashley Hickson-Lovence has written a diverse range of books: novels, poetry and Young Adult fiction. Using different genres and writing styles, he gives voice to ordinary people, usually unheard. Ashley’s first novel, The 392, was set on a London bus over a thirty six minute journey from Hoxton to Highbury. Your Show (2022) is a fictionalised story of Uriah Rennie, a trailblazing black football referee. Wild East, a young adult novel, was winner of the 2024 East Anglian Book Awards and YA winner of the Diverse Book Awards 2025. Why I am Not a Bus Driver (2025), was a book of poetry, a homage to his grandfather. His new novel, About to Fall Apart, also has a strong family connection. It is the story of Aidy, a mixed heritage man in his sixties, brought up in a small town in Fermanagh. His birth, the result of a short relationship between a young Irish woman and young man from Grenada, was a local scandal. Struggling as a single mother in 1950s rural Ireland, his mother abandoned him at eleven months and his longing for her is the core of the novel.

The story is set over a single fraught weekend, when Aidy punches a racist colleague and is left with a very bruised fist and strong sense of foreboding. Racism has been a feature of Aidy’s life, but this time he snapped. But there is pressure to get home to deal with a looming deadline. He must finish writing the story that gives the title to the novel, and then his teenage daughter arrives: he had forgotten she was coming. Growing up without the comfort of family, Aidy finds it hard to sustain close relationships. He does not know how to be a parent and his three children from three separate mothers struggle to relate to him. However, there is a gentleness in their interaction and there are moments of genuine connection.

Aidy lives on the Irish Northern Ireland border and he ‘straddles a border of his own/ a half way house/ between black and white’ (70). A central thread is his longing for his mother. His attempts at contacting her have failed but he continues to hope. He eventually found his father in Grenada but there was a similar lack of belonging, his lighter skin was ‘marking him as an outsider/ neither this nor that/ somewhere in between/’ (70).

I became immediately immersed in Aidy’s story. The strong sense of urgency and of passing time propels the reader towards the climax, using a technique of forward slash which gives a sense of movement and momentum. Use of specific geographical locations and local references gives us a strong sense of place. I was reminded of Joyce, who in Ulysses (1922), captured the voices of ordinary people on a single day in Dublin. Joyce wanted to create a distinct language for Irish people at a particular time in history, when their own language was lost. Ashley Hickson-Lovence has found a distinctive style and language, bringing us voices we do not often hear. I thoroughly recommend this novel and I look forward to what comes next.