‘Where there is no vision,” the Bible tells us, “the people perish.” It’s a lesson absorbed by Sayon Hughes, son of an African-Caribbean pastor, the Bristol “yute” who is the ambitious protagonist of Moses McKenzie’s impressive debut, An Olive Grove in Ends.
But there’s a snag. Sayon’s admirable vision for social mobility – to escape the mean streets of Ends and buy a grand house overlooking the Avon Gorge – is predicated on him selling enough heroin to put down a substantial deposit on his dream home. And it’s further complicated by the little matter that our narrator observes after only a few pages: “Blue-and-white police tape cordoned off the footpath where I’d taken Cornell’s life not two days ago.”
