{"id":258000,"date":"2025-11-12T03:46:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T03:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/258000\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T03:46:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T03:46:10","slug":"borderline-fiction-a-mind-bending-portrayal-of-personality-disorder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/258000\/","title":{"rendered":"Borderline Fiction \u2014 a mind-bending portrayal of personality disorder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

Two years ago Derek Owusu was included on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list, a once-in-a-decade celebration of our brightest literary talent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t so sure. \u201cGranta said I was one of the futures of British novel writing. It didn\u2019t feel like that,\u201d reads the headline on an article he wrote for GQ. The young, Black, working-class author of experimental fiction had looked on as the literary world\u2019s response to the list \u201cwas one of dismissal and disapproval\u201d, with critics paying little attention to the writers\u2019 work and \u201cmore about what the cohort \u2018signified\u2019 about the shape and direction of British literature\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Such an experience would make some want to disappear from publishing altogether. Gladly, Borderline Fiction, Owusu\u2019s third novel, shows the author hasn\u2019t let it alter his pursuit of crafting the mind-bending fiction his listing recognised in the first place.<\/p>\n

Much of the novel is harsh and frenetic, with drinks, drugs and sex prominent. Yet Marcus is a loveable character<\/p>\n

Compared with That Reminds Me, his 2019 verse-prose debut that won the Desmond Elliott Prize, and Losing the Plot<\/a>, a poetic telling of his mother\u2019s migration from Ghana to Britain, stylistically Borderline Fiction is Owusu\u2019s most conventional novel yet \u2014 though that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s actually conventional. In alternating chapters we follow Marcus, our first-person narrator, aged 19 and aged 25. At 19 he is working in a north London gym when he meets Adwoa, with whom he becomes besotted. At 25 he is an English literature student in Bolton when he meets San and again falls in love.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In both narrative strands, Owusu chops and changes between hefty blocks of stream-of-consciousness prose and fast-paced dialogue presented without speech marks. Throughout, the language is peppered with London slang: \u201cAdwoa looked good. Her hair was Dutch braided, two of them, actually, so she looked even more innocent, but drop to the jeans now and then turn it around and the back was a mad ting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Much of the novel is harsh and frenetic, with drinks, drugs and sex prominent. Yet Marcus is a loveable character. Owusu\u2019s narration brings out in him a naivety, such as when he thinks the sound of feet coming off the floor of a club is \u201clike worn-out Velcro on them primary school shoes\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Marcus is troubled. Still negotiating the trauma of a childhood spent first in care and later with an alcoholic father, he drinks heavily and self-medicates with cocaine and cocktails of prescription pills. His intense periods of infatuation with his girlfriends are matched with equally extreme bouts of psychosis, with build-ups and comedowns that Owusu details rhythmically: \u201cThose were the best sleeps I had, when my body raged against the dying diazepam and Xanax and lit up my central nervous system to slow time or heat me up or make me faint or dry my mouth or make me freeze, moisten my palms, make me dizzy, make me doubt, make me cry, make me split\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009\u201d Such passages are horrible \u2014 yet thrilling to read.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Knowing Marcus was there aged 19, it is painful to see him still trapped in this spiral six years later. The choppiness of the alternating chapters, combined with the frenzy of much of the action \u2014 and the sheer bewilderment, at times, over exactly what is going on \u2014 makes Borderline Fiction a chaotic read, matching the discord of its contents. The novel\u2019s title suggests borderline personality disorder (BPD), with which Owusu has been diagnosed. While wider societal understanding of mental illness grows, conditions such as BPD remain misunderstood. Indeed Marcus, when a friend mentions BPD to him, hasn\u2019t heard of it. Borderline Fiction is an addictive and affecting account of how it can spin a person out of control without them even knowing it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Borderline Fiction by Derek Owusu Canongate \u00a318.99, 304 pages<\/p>\n

Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Caf\u00e9<\/a> and follow FT Weekend on Instagram<\/a>, Bluesky<\/a> and X<\/a><\/p>\n