Donjong Heights

The first thing about this book, it looks nice. Small and hardbacked with a beautiful picture on the cover, and then between each chapter. The second, it’s in verse. That’s right, verse!

If that’s the kind of thing that puts you off then don’t let it! Really!

The Donjong Heights of the title is the tower-block where our protagonist lives. It’s in South London and home to the ethnically diverse. Our hero, unnamed, has a big problem. It’s his ‘lame aorta’ which is not beating ‘as it ought to’. To put it simply, he’s dying.

Dying puts things in perspective. It’s a time when you need to reassess, judge, put things in order. Or as our hero does, decide to have one last fling of the dice by throwing a Christmas party.

And inviting his long lost love.

To the party come Tyrone, his neighbour, and ‘one man, all-night Dub Selecta’, Hylie ‘the fair-skinned Rasta-Queen’ (used to be known as Kylie), Lord Byron ‘governed by his Johnson’, his brother Chester, a pro-wrestler, John J a sozzled former academic and finally Tony, the tailor.

It may all end in disaster.

Oh yes, and don’t forget the omniscient narrator. With a lisp.

‘We find him in the blacketht thtate
Tith truly foul and unpropitioth’

This wonderful novel (in verse!) about the man with the poorly heart truly pulls at the heart strings. Or heart thtringth. It’s both funny and sad and verbally dextrous. It’s the kind of thing you want to read out loud and you should. Cause it’s in verse!

And when you’ve read this one go out and buy Eugene Onegin and The Golden Gate.

They’re in verse too. And as wonderful as this.