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Stephen Thompson’s brave story centres on the plight of Gabriel Powers, a man who finds himself in a hostel for addicts after the most frightening flight from Hackney and the world of crime he grew up in. For Gabriel to come to terms with his addiction, he must first confront his demons, and although his hostel worker and lover Marcia is there to help him, the journey to back to the wastelands of West London is harrowingly and brilliantly recreated. Painful, acutely honest and based on the author’s own experiences, Toy Soldiers is a fine and brave debut by a brilliant new voice.
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Reviews
Beautifully written, painfully honest and deeply affecting. Stephen Thompson's debut novel is terrific
Thompson's novel is well crafted and intelligently paced
A sensitive, subtle and fascinating account of a young black man's fight against crack addiction . . . Thompson's writing is compelling
Beautifully honest and unapologetically bleak
Thompson is at his best describing the violent, ghettoised underworld
A cool, urban tale of compelling anti-hero Gabriel's struggle for redemption from hard times and hard drugs in London's darker boroughs. Stephen Thompson's vital, gritty and gripping novel reads like a kind of Trainspotting in Hackney
Thompson's disconcertingly simple prose describes the ease of the fall and the struggle of the rise without flinching once