Award winning author Pete Kalu returns with a kaleidoscopic memoir that explodes with life in 250 errant mini-essays. Read an extract below. Act Normal: Joy and Despair in Postcolonial Britain publishes October 23rd 2025.
Line-ups: a sideboard memory
Police approached me, they were looking for someone to make up an ID parade. Yes or no? Umm. What if I am chosen by the victim? All Black men look alike through white eyes. If picked, I could be fitted up by the cops. In the line-up, I consider the line-ups of my childhood. Who stole the biscuits from the biscuit tin? It wasn’t me. Five times the question is asked. Five times a child’s head shakes. Mum is exasperated and has us all sit on the sideboard: ‘Stay there till one of you confesses.’ Time goes by. Reels and reels of time. No one cracks. Mum is flummoxed. I notice that the other four siblings are acting normal, faces a picture of innocence. I also know that, since I did not nab the biscuits on this occasion, one of the other four did, but I also realise there is no way of objectively knowing this. The truth is not something
that exists in the world to be found like a lost sock. Only evidence. Probability. Calculations. Or a confession. Mum looks. We are all crumb-free. Five inscrutable faces gaze back at her. Reels and reels more time. ‘Me!’ says my brother finally, shuffling off the sideboard, head low. ‘I ate the biscuits.’ Doubt immediately slides into my mind because I know my brother and while I can’t tell from his silence or his not-speaking face where the truth is with him, I can tell from how he speaks, and his voice is saying that he didn’t do it, despite his confession, that he’s just bored with sitting on the sideboard and wants it to end. ‘I ate the biscuits. There.’ Mum had him sweep the stairs. The guilty – one of my three sisters – got off scot-free.
In the police line-up, I am not chosen.
Act Normal is available for pre-order now.
