PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS WORKS BY KATE TEMPEST : "Tempest . doesn't just leap off the page, but leaps into your throat and demands to be shouted all the way out." --Colson Whitehead "Powerful and merciful." --Ali Smith "Ms. Tempest has an ability to write about big, metaphysical subjects in the most vernacular language." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times on HOLD YOUR OWN and BRAND NEW ANCIENTS "One of the brightest British talents around. Her spoken-word performances have the metre and craft of traditional poetry, the kinetic agitation of hip-hop and the intimacy of a whispered heart-to-heart . drawing on ancient mythology and sermonic cadence to tell stories of the everyday.
" --The Guardian "[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." --The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice "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." --The New Yorker on THE BRICKS THAT BUILT THE HOUSES "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 on THE BRICKS THAT BUILT THE HOUSES "A novel that perfectly captures the modern trials and tribulations of youth and urban life in London." --BuzzFeed on THE BRICKS THAT BUILT THE HOUSES "[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 on THE BRICKS THAT BUILT THE HOUSES "Thrillingly good . Ms. Tempest stitches together words with such animate grace that language acquires an almost tactile quality, and the drama she unfolds . soars to operatic dimensions.
[An] hypnotically persuasive vision." --Charles Isherwood, New York Times on BRAND NEW ANCIENTS "Breathe[s] new life into old classic forms; a long poem about us and the gods that's all high-kicking verve and long-range understanding. I loved its vision, powerful and merciful." --Ali Smith, The Observer, on BRAND NEW ANCIENTS "This feels a lot like Patti Smith here, in massive wordplay. The sorrows, loss, and rage are the same; and you have to admire the inner beauty coming to surface in serious ways; and more than that, applaud a young artist on a marvelous occasion for driving a dream to the fullest extent just for the flight of it." --Washington Review of Books on LET THEM EAT CHAOS.