About to Fall Apart (Faber & Faber) by Ashley Hickson-Lovence is an identity story steeped in urgency, its events unspooling over the course of a single weekend. The novel’s protagonist, sixty-six year old mixed-race Aidy, was raised in a supportive adoptive household, and yearns to know more about his birth mother. Aidy’s fragmented relationships with his own three children are juxtaposed against his quest to learn, definitively, about the place and people he can call his own. Written in a fluid and expressive style, the novel pulses with compelling energy.