We Pretty Pieces of Flesh — Colwill Brown

An exuberant and ribald debut novel about three adolescent girls coming of age in a gritty post-industrial town in Yorkshire, England in the ‘90s who are as sweetly vulnerable and funny as they are cunning and tough “Ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punchline of a joke or place they changed trains once ont way to London.” But it’s also the home of Rach, Kel, and Shaz, bezzies since childhood. From scheming one another’s first kisses, to sneaking vodka (or the occasional Cointreau) into school in water bottles, to accompanying one another to Family Planning for pregnancy tests, the girls come of age together, Donny lasses through and through. Never mind that Rach is skeptical of Shaz’s bolder plots; or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin plotting a course to uni; or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace – the girls are inseparable, their friendship as indestructible as they are. But as the girls grow up and away from each other, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart. Is their shared past enough to keep them close? Written in a Yorkshire dialect that brings a place and its people magnificently to life, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh spans decades and continents as its heroines come of age, never shying from the ugly truths of girlhood. Like Trainspotting and Shuggie Bain, it tracks hard-edged lives and makes them sing, making one overlooked and forgotten place the very center of the world.