In 2013, aged 27, she became the youngest person to win the Ted Hughes award for new work in poetry with Brand New Ancients, an hour-long spoken story; her first hip-hop album, Everybody Down (2014), was shortlisted for the Mercury prize; on stage, her energy is electrifying. The Bricks That Built the Houses, her debut novel, is surprisingly conventional. Set in Tempest’s native southeast London, its only quirk is transporting the gritty drama and characters of Everybody Down to the page. It opens with twentysomethings, Becky, Harry (Harriet) and Leon, leaving London in a fourth-hand Ford Cortina, “a suitcase full of money sits fat and happy as a baby” on Becky’s lap. As Tempest moves back in time to a year earlier to trace the events that have led to the trio