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The Rest of You

by Maame Blue

Length 8 hours 45 minutes

Language English

Narrators Sara Novak & Ekua Ekumah

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Bookseller recommendation

“Born into a powerful Ghanaian family she knows next to nothing about, now thirty-year-old Whitney has grown up in London under her grandmother’s care. As she physically unpacks the trauma of her clients as a massage therapist, she finds herself wondering about her own past. Historical flashbacks are alternated with Whitney’s modern world, which is narrated in the second person. This book explores the things we don’t tell each other—even those closest to us—and discusses intergenerational trauma in a way that I found not to be overwhelming as a highly sensitive reader. I especially appreciated the representation of one realizing an experience had been sexual violence long after it happened.”
— Mary • Raven Book Store

Summary
About the author

An internationally award-winning writer makes her triumphant American debut in this emotionally powerful story—a potent blend of Queenie and The Vanishing Half—about a woman’s journey to uncover a foundational family secret from the childhood she does not remember.

On the cusp of thirty, Ghanaian Londoner Whitney Appiah was born with a special gift. The massage therapist can physically sense where her clients’ trauma lies and heal them. But Whitney has no idea that she too, is suffering. Tragic events from her youth have left a terrible, unseen mark. When a dangerous encounter with the man she’s dating triggers a wave of fragmented recollections, Whitney embarks on a journey to reclaim her memories and the truth that is buried deep in her early years growing up in Kumasi, Ghana during the 1990s.

Spanning three decades, told through the viewpoints of Whitney, sisters Gloria and Aretha, and their house help Maame Serwaa, The Rest of You explores what happens when we try to move forward through the lacuna of our past.

A strikingly original novel inspired by the Twi proverb of Sankofa: looking back in order to move forward, The Rest of You is a story of generational healing, what it means to be Black British, and surviving familial migrant journeys. Tackling darkly serious themes yet full of hope and optimism, and told with an eye towards the future, Maame Blue’s extraordinary tale is an unforgettable celebration of womanhood, friendship, and family.

Fiction Fiction - Literary

Maame Blue is a Ghanaian-Londoner and award-winning author of the novel Bad Love, which won the 2021 Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize. She has been a scriptwriter on a Venezuelan telenovela remixed for African audiences, and her short stories have appeared in several international anthologies, including Not Quite Right For Us, New Australian Fiction 2020, and Joyful, Joyful. Maame is a recipient of the 2022 Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship and was a 2022 POCC Artist-in-Residence. Maame contributes regularly to Writers Mosaic and has written pieces for Refinery29, Black Ballad, and Society of Authors Magazine. She is a Faber Academy and City Lit Creative Writing Tutor and regularly runs creative writing workshops. She lives in London.