THE PLOT: ‘For Such a Time as This’ by Shani Akilah is a short story collection about Black British Londoners. As London re-opens after the pandemic, a group of friends emerge from their cocoons. David’s anxiety and depression are drowning him, but he confronts his demons by returning to Ghana for the first time in years. Rianna reconnects with her grandmother after her father’s passing. In the wake of #BLM, Niah tries to call out her employer for their empty words about diversity and inclusion, but comes face-to-face with racism throughout the organisation. Culminating in an ‘outro’ where they all gather for a party, the friendship group explores community, independence and relationships.

SUMMARY: These stories are written with a lot of heart and the characters are so loveable and realistic. As a millennial navigating the corporate world myself, there were a lot of relatable aspects that drew me in and identified with many of the protagonists. I loved how they all connected and how each friend was struggling with something they initially had to process internally before sharing with others. The overall message is ‘you never know what others are going through’. While I often praise simple, clean writing, I find it needs to be paired with a depth of character and an emotional arc/transformation. This is often a problem with short stories because there’s less space to craft a plot that shows character development. I found this collection struggled slightly because there was a lot of backstory and telling the reader about a character’s emotional state, rather than revealing character in scene. However, I would recommend this book and read more of this author’s work in future.

GOOD BITS:  This collection covered a lot of important topics that aren’t always spoken about in the Black community, such as schizophrenia, depression and managing sickle cell while dating. As is the nature of short story collections, I wish some of these topics had been covered in more depth. However, my favourites were the more emotional stories, such as Ghana in December’, ‘For Such A Time As This’, ‘A Short Trip to Tesco’, and ‘Back to the Office’.

NOT SO GOOD BITS: I felt many of these stories were snapshots of a character’s life, rather than rooted in scene or action. This is personal taste but I feel it helps to hinge a story around a life-changing moment – the character at the start of the story needs to go through something significant that will make them a different person at the end. I’m not saying there needs to be car crashes and murders, in many successful stories the catalyst for change is quiet, but there needs to be enough plot to move the character forward in their life journey, rather than a snapshot of character in stasis.

OVERALL: I’d recommend this book to fans of ‘Love In Colour’ by Bolu Babalola, ‘Who’s Loving You’ (edited by Sareeta Domingo), and ‘What You Are Looking For Is In The Library’ by Michika Aoyama.

Thank you to @oneworldpublications for a #gifted advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. ‘For Such A Time As This’ will be published on 20^th June 2024 and is available to pre-order on my bookshop.org page.