I say we - I don’t mean to speak for anyone other than myself or my characters - there’s just this feeling of disillusionment. The experiences you write about feel like they’re very familiar to you. How autobiographical is this material? The London in the novel comes alive through the author’s lyricism: “Modern punks and ancient drunks and new-school rude-girls escaping the drudgery. If you need love, you can come here.”

To change the sex of a main character seems like a pretty bold move, but it pushes the reader to understanding that sometimes sex is less important than gender. If anything, the change adds a new element for our characters to dance through, and dance they do. I’d love to know whether Tempest always knew Pete had a sister. Tempest gives an arch view on the disenfranchisement through characters like Harry: “As if all we want is shit beer and silence, beans and chips and f***ing scratch cards.” It was this jarring transition from poet to president that settled my opinion of this book: in the light of this world, it is a truly good thing. An afterword by the author notes that some of the stories in the novel began life in her play Wasted. A sense of this comes through in the book, which reads more as a series of character-driven set pieces than a cohesive narrative. Tempest is a talent for sure, but one who has not reined herself in sufficiently for the novel form. When the idea came that merited the form and I finally sat down to write, I realised I had been developing my voice for years, and every single scrap I’d scoured with undisciplined scribbles was really helpful in making me feel at ease with sentence structure, prose and paragraphs.

To add form and character to what can sometimes be a mass expanse of flat wall there are design details that you can incorporate. And, I think it's fair to say, that she has wowed, stunned and surprised everyone she has talked to. The robotic laying arm sits on a nine-metre high vertical lift frame, removing the need for scaffolding and for people to work at height. This is what we’ve grown up with. Our legacy is this culture of greed and it makes us believe we can’t believe in anything. We don’t trust those who govern for us. The control system sends out alerts when these important jobs need doing, and then takes a photograph of the completed task to form a complete digital record of the key quality criteria.

I think what we’ve learned - and it’s sad to say - is that we can’t trust anything. Nothing will change. The things that make the world go round are beyond anyone’s control because it’s all about corporate control and profit before people. All my life I’ve been writing prose but not publicly. I write often: when I’m moving through the city I’m often just so blown away by encounters and situations. I’ll carry a notebook. I’ll be writing verbatim things I overhear. As a novel, TBTBTH very much reads like a work that originated in a different artform by someone who - however accomplished she may be in other fields - is demonstrably in need of far harsher editing than perhaps her reputation allows.

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Written and read by Kate Tempest. Tempest is a poet, rapper, playright and novelist. She was awarded the Ted Hughes Prize for poetry in 2013 for her epic narrative poem, Brand New Ancients. The following year, her narrative-led hip hop album, Everybody Down, was nominated for the Mercury Prize. Description: Award-winning poet and rapper Kate Tempest reads her debut novel, a tale of desire, ambition and untamed hedonism in London's beating heart.

With all fiction it begins in truth. The best fiction begins in some moment that feels so real and right with you that it sends you to try and make sense of it through writing. The setting, for example - South London - is so huge for me internally; it’s the place I grew up. I used to get frustrated asking, 'Why am I writing journalistic-style entries when I should be writing a play or a novel?' I felt so urgently I needed to make my mark and get moving, I was distraught about all this writing I was generating that wasn’t a novel. It makes you think about life and what the purpose of it is. It's very touching and honest. There's a rawness to it that had me captivated and I couldn't put it down. But this heightened, hyperbolic style continues for another couple of chapters which are theoretically establishing said characters. Ok, we're witnessing a lightning-bolt, love at first sight moment between two strangers in a club, but one or both girls are endlessly melting, exploding, bursting into flames or squeezing their bones out of their skin every other paragraph. These overwrought similes and metaphors don't feel remotely earned and are, frankly, more than a little cringey.Obviously, this is my first novel; I’m a long way from being comfortable with the form. But I got to the end of this epic process and realised I’m now ready to write my first novel.

mijn e reader is helaas de meest ontrouwe reisgezel ooit, ze heeft het na 'met de fiets naar rome' opnieuw begeven tot heden. de hostel waar ik nu verblijf heeft een rekje met vergeten of achtergelaten boeken en tussen alle Portugese zat 1 Engelse parel naar de hand van Kae Tempest. Op zich al speciaal om een boek te lezen van iemand die je enkel kent als zanger/spokenword/poëet en daardoor droeg ik het boek vaak luidop zingend voor. het deed me denken aan 'een klein leven' van Hanya Yanagihara omdat je een gelijkaardige liefde voor de rauwe harde levendige stad voelt, in dit geval Zuid-Londen, en ook zijn er al die verschillende perspectieven, mensen met een rugzak en/of mensen gebukt onder de net niet ondraaglijke zwaarte van het leven, maar nooit zo heftig als bij Hanya Yanagihara. ik denk dat het ook de eerste keer was dat een queer romance op papier voor mij zo herkenbaar en aftastend en zacht en alles was, Vibrant but patchy debut novel from an urban poet, whose first rap album (“Everybody Down”) is effectively a rap version of the book – with each song corresponding to a chapter. The opening chapter is practically a piece of performance poetry, barrelling along at a furious, rhythmic pace. This is somewhat justified as it's describing three major characters' adreneline-fuelled escape from London and some apparently very dodgy people for reasons which eventually become clear, albeit not for a long time. With the in-built vertical lift, the machine can build easily to the height of a standard two-storey house, so it is much safer than building in the traditional way.

Soaring … Tempest's flair for language is tempered by their sense of rhythm and pace … Deeply affecting: cinematic in scope; touching in its empathic humanity … Tempest's voice – by turns raging and tender – never falters' New York Times It is this outlook that bonds herself and Harry during their drug-fuelled first meeting in the club. As they swap stories about what they do, why they do it and who they would like to someday be, the scene presents a picture of a tough modern London where breaking class boundaries means breaking the law.