Eden McKenzie-Goddard

An enlightening and beautifully crafted story

JJ Bola, author of Mask Off: Masculinity Redefined

With Smallie, McKenzie-Goddard has achieved a paradoxical feat: making a singular type of pain feel indisputably collective without sacrificing each unique aspect of such a dangerous time in recent history. Emotive, careful and wearing, McKenzie-Goddard’s grasp of language is just as strong as the effect this outstanding debut will have on every reader

Ore Agbaje-Williams, author of The Three of Us

It is not too often that the significance of someone's work strikes you between the eyes from the first page, but this is what Eden has achieved with Smallie... Smallie reminds us of what it means to unite in powerlessness and how our futures often rest in the palms of the unjust. Told with stunning language and underlining the plight of the Windrush generation in the UK, this novel is one that will live with me indefinitely.

Onyi Nwabineli, author of Allow Me to Introduce Myself

In 1961, 19-year-old Lucinda Brown travels to England in search of her lover, Clarence Braithwaite, a jazz musician who left Barbados to join the British army. Aboard the ship to Southampton, Lucinda meets Raldo, a free-wheeling Trinidadian, who offers her the wild freedom that both her old life in Barbados and the life that awaits her in Britain lack. Driven by loyalty, and the memory of the little boy she left behind, she chooses Clarence – though soon realises that he is no longer the saxophonist she fell in love with, but a veteran at war with himself. 
 
Fifty years later, Patrick Braithwaite, a father, husband, business owner and recovering alcoholic from Tottenham, has to rally his three siblings when their mother receives a letter from the Home Office that tears their life apart. They need to prove their mother’s legal arrival, to prevent her deportation, and to do that they need to find a man their mother once loved, known only by the name of Raldo… 
 
Tender, rich and big-hearted, Smallie is a stunning British debut about three generations of a Bajan-British family affected by the Windrush scandal that will move, enrage and pull you in.

Eden McKenzie-Goddard

Praise for Smallie

An enlightening and beautifully crafted story

With Smallie, McKenzie-Goddard has achieved a paradoxical feat: making a singular type of pain feel indisputably collective without sacrificing each unique aspect of such a dangerous time in recent history. Emotive, ...

It is not too often that the significance of someone's work strikes you between the eyes from the first page, but this is what Eden has achieved with Smallie... Smallie reminds us of what it means to unite in powerl ...

An enlightening and beautifully crafted story

With Smallie, McKenzie-Goddard has achieved a paradoxical feat: making a singular type of pain feel indisputably collective without sacrificing each unique aspect of such a dangerous time in recent history. Emotive, ...

It is not too often that the significance of someone's work strikes you between the eyes from the first page, but this is what Eden has achieved with Smallie... Smallie reminds us of what it means to unite in powerl ...

An enlightening and beautifully crafted story

With Smallie, McKenzie-Goddard has achieved a paradoxical feat: making a singular type of pain feel indisputably collective without sacrificing each unique aspect of such a dangerous time in recent history. Emotive, ...

It is not too often that the significance of someone's work strikes you between the eyes from the first page, but this is what Eden has achieved with Smallie... Smallie reminds us of what it means to unite in powerl ...

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter