I have to admit that it took me a minute to get into this novel. But once I did, I really did. In the first pages we meet Cyril Pennington, the father of five children. These five children have four different mothers who are each raising their children on their own, because Cyril doesn't pitch in, either with money or time. It was hard to view Cyril with sympathetic eyes, since he seems to care more about his flashy jeep than about his kids. But later in the book we learn of his childhood where he is left by his mother in Jamaica to be raised in a literal shack when he is two years old. Cyril is then brought to London to live with his mother when he is fifteen, but he doesn't remember her at all.
The five offspring of Cyril really only meet once as young kids, when he picks them each up and takes them out for ice cream together. They don't all come together again until adulthood when one of Cyril's daughters, Dimple (now thirty years old) finds herself in a predicament. She thinks that she has killed her abusive boyfriend out of self-defense, and all of her siblings are drawn in to help her with this terrible situation.
Told with dark comedic flair, the reader learns about each of Cyril's children through their role in helping Dimple. Nikisha, the oldest, no-nonsense and managerial, is now a mother of two. Then there's Danny, an ex-con plumber who is determined to be the kind of present, loving dad to his one-year-old that Cyril never was to him. There's Lizzie, born one week apart from Dimple but from a different mother, an intelligent med-school student who comes across as judgmental and superior to her siblings. The youngest is Prince, Nikisha's full-blood baby brother who is in his early twenties and juggles multiple girlfriends.
Dimple still lives with her mother (whom she considers her best and only friend) and is the main protagonist in this story. Dimple is an "influencer", and her sisters and brothers see her as a general pushover and "obsessed with playing a victim". The five siblings become acquainted and grow more aware of their similarities and differences. Cyril's adult children are drawn together in this dark comedy not only by Dimple's predicament but by their shared blood and their abandonment issues. At one point when Cyril is asked by his offspring if he is prepared to be there as their dad he responds, "No, because I don't have it in me". Their eventual acceptance and love for their father as he is along with the connectivity to family that all humans crave, even when those very people might not be ones they would hand-pick, make for a cast of very compelling characters.
The twist that happens midway through the novel leads to some dramatic, exciting circumstances that these five people need to navigate through. This lively plotline along with its appealing characters, laid bare by their vulnerabilities, are what make People Person stand out.
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