"[ The Bricks that Built the Houses ] marks the arrival of a significant new voice . deeply affecting: cinematic in scope; touching in its emphatic humanity . Tempest's voice--by turns raging and tender--never falters. By the time the novel reaches its cleareyed climax, cleverly undercutting its own promised happy ending, the reader is left with the impression of a work that hums with human life." - New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice "A novel that perfectly captures the modern trials and tribulations of youth and urban life in London." - BuzzFeed "Tempest has a knack for the devastating throwaway line--a skill-honed, no doubt, from years of rapping and spoken-word performances. Her work is rich with underlinable lines . Captivating.
" - New Yorker "[Tempest is] a Zadie Smith if Smith were in her 20s again . An artistic prodigy . [Her] captivating The Bricks That Built the Houses is rich in detail, clever in plot and filled with characters who live on the edge but never quite give up." - Shelf Awareness "With a scope that rivals Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex , Tempest juggles themes of family, history, and womanhood." - Booklist "This is a bold, bright, beguiling novel; a lustrous pageant that dazzles and grips . [Tempest] may well be unstoppable." - Sunday Telegraph "Blake, Shakespeare, Eliot, the Wu-Tang Clan: when an artist's outlook on boundaries is so dizzyingly open, you long to know what happens next." - The Guardian "Tempest is brilliant at capturing a distinctly contemporary state of mind .
Her writing has a startling, unmediated freshness." - Metro "[This] fast-paced, filmic narrative brims with energy." - Vogue UK "It's hard not to be blown away by Kate Tempest . A stirring, post-Dickensian lens trained on London's lonely underbelly." - Evening Standard "She has that vanishingly rare combination of heavyweight literary credentials and, having started out as a spoken-word artist on the hip-hop scene, a deep understanding of [London] at street level. Both of these aspects of her writing shine through in The Bricks That Built the Houses , which is as lyrical as it is gritty." - New Statesman "Tempest is a worthy champion for a generation of disillusioned youth." - Sunday Times "Explosive .
It fairly flies off the page." - Observer "Remarkable not only for its timely commentary on the financial difficulties faced by many millennials, but for its meticulous examination of parents' inability to understand their children's struggles . The Bricks That Built the Houses creates a complex narrative that rarely falters and eventually coheres into a strong and lyrical whole." - The Millions "Uncontainable . In her restless, relentless creativity, this unique talent hops freely from one art form to another . Tempest has proved you can have intergenerational appeal and still be cool, and that you can stretch your creative wings and not settle in one place. Long may she continue." - Lyn Gardner, Guardian "When Tempest's angst-ridden lyricism is let off the leash, the effect is thrilling .
Her lonely protagonists . come to seem both painfully particular and impressively archetypal . Pinpoint evocation of a milieu, its texture and contours, all delivered with an intensely gathered and focused energy." - Alex Clark, Guardian.