Londoners Becky and Harry are two twenty-something women whose unlikely romance buds amid violent botched drug deals, familial dysfunction, and self-doubt. Through their relationship, Tempest passionately condemns London as an unforgiving and dangerous Moloch, yet also sanctifies it as a soulful, kaleidoscopic source of inspiration.

The Bricks that Built the Houses is not so much about urban deprivation as about bewildered, listless young people beleaguered by the inauthenticity of mass culture and the fakeries of entertainment and the corporate world (though it is unfortunate that Tempest often insists on telling, not showing). It is also about money, and the strain of the tedious and compromising struggle to obtain it while still pursuing one's passions – such as dancing for Becky.

Tempest writes evocatively of her native South London neighbourhoods; the novel is best in its early stages when her natural, rhythmic dialogue bounces between characters. Less successful are the many inexplicable digressions to give even peripheral figures a back-story. A passage describing events in World War II (D-Day, no less) is particularly clumsy and disrupts the momentum established by Becky and Harry's chemistry. Their dynamic is the novel's heart. Though Tempest tries too hard to be the voice of her generation, there is enough depth here to suggest that any future experiments with prose may yield something less righteous, and more subtle.