January 11, 2021
Krauze’s autobiographical debut sketches an explosive, episodic image of a young British man’s double life as college student and armed robber. At 17, Gabriel Krauze, known to friends as Snoopz, leaves his Polish immigrant parents and twin brother behind to live in the rough public housing of South Kilburn, London, in the early 2000s. He spends his days getting high and mugging people (sometimes “just to break the boredom”), and makes insightful comments in English class (on Romeo and Juliet: “Revenge is the purest instinct whether you like it or not”). The summer before his second year, he is placed on house arrest for assault. Snoopz drifts through the days “bunning cro” (smoking weed) and breaking his house arrest to continue attacking people. A stint in prison for violating his probation does little to change his ways, and the tinges of regret that eventually appear go nowhere. At times the author’s swagger makes the reader feel the real-life material hasn’t been fully sublimated, but the prose sizzles as Snoopz’s frantic narration (“I swear I’m gonna frass out and Mazey says swear down fam?”) blends with arresting lyrical flourishes (“I watch dawn’s pink fingers claw the sky open”). This tour through a hard-knock life is compulsively readable. Agent: Jo Unwin, Jo Unwin Literary Agency.
May 1, 2021
In this cutting debut, Krauze introduces readers to the London of his young adulthood, a London of loyalty and violence, of gang allegiance, stabbings, gunshot wounds, and illegal drug trafficking. The autobiographical novel follows Gabriel, known on the street as Snoopz, through his first years of university. He splits his time between studying English (debating Nietzsche, dissecting Hamlet) and executing armed robberies with other prominent gang members. As Gabriel, he chases women and falls in love. As Snoopz, he chases money and power while evading arrest and retaliation. Tension grows in the spaces between these two personas as time goes on. His identity is further split by his loving family, who constantly fear for Gabriel's life. Between stints in prison, Gabriel relentlessly pursues his degree and struggles to give up the adrenaline rush of crime. The book is written in an authentic London street vernacular, creating a wholly engrossing experience of Gabriel's life. Krauze has penned a requiem for his younger self, and for young people everywhere caught between worlds of differing morality and beliefs.
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Starred review from April 15, 2021
A young man describes his several years in London's gang culture in this challenging debut. The narrator, Snoopz, who's occasionally called Gabriel or Krauze, describes the violence, substance abuse, and crime that permeate the battered housing towers of South Kilburn--"eighteen floors of rusty concrete silence and windows repeating themselves and all of it holding the sky back." Gang rivalries make every day a gantlet, every slight becomes grounds for vengeance. Knife assaults are common and graphically described. And yet, any form of action might seem nearly miraculous given the prodigious quantities of drugs and booze consumed. Days (and pages) pass with a numbing sameness, punctuated by dealing or using drugs or mugging wealthy citizens in brazen street assaults. Jail time is inevitable, with all its soul-crushing routines and perils not much different from life outside. Snoopz looks to be one of the rare escapees from the nightmarish milieu as he pursues a university degree in literature. To the growing genre of drug-riddled fiction--Irvine Welsh, Denis Johnson, Joel Mowdy, Nico Walker--Krauze adds a flourish, a kind of harsh music, with his use of gang argot. Imagine Riddley Walker combined with A Clockwork Orange: "top shotters who make p's but move too d-low for the eaters to rob them" (translation: top drug dealers who earn a lot of money but are too careful for thieves to hit them). Snoopz is intelligent, but he also extols the gangster life's bling and transient glories, its tests of manhood (women in the hood are there mainly for sex). Krauze doesn't offer fresh wisdom on the causes of or cures for the hard life he grew up in, but maybe an insider's artfully gruesome view can turn the right minds to seeking better solutions. A gritty read for its gore, drugs, and profanity, but possessed of a raw and honest eloquence.
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