We Pretty Pieces of Flesh

A searing debut novel written entirely in South Yorkshire dialect about three working-class girls whose friendship is torn apart by a devastating secret.

A gut-punch novel of girlhood in early noughties Yorkshire from a blazing new voice.

'Blistering, brilliant, savage and smart' — EIMEAR McBRIDE
'Unforgettable...a wondrous, luminous novel' — NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH
'Brilliant and original on every level... she is a writer like nobody else' — ELIZABETH McCRACKEN

Ask anyone non-Northern, they'll only know Donny as the punchline of a joke or as the place they changed trains once on the way to London.

But Doncaster's also the home of Rach, Shaz, and Kel, bezzies since childhood and Donny lasses through and through. They share everything, from blagging their way into nightclubs to trips to the Family Planning clinic when they are late. Never mind that Rach is sceptical of Shaz's bolder plots, or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin charting a course to uni, or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace — their friendship is as indestructible as they are. But as they grow up and away from one another, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart.

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh takes you by the hand and leads you through Doncaster's schoolyards, alleyways, and nightclubs, laying bare the intimate treacheries of adolescence and the ways we betray ourselves when we don't trust our friends. Like The Glorious Heresies and Shuggie Bain, it tracks hard-edged lives and makes them sing, turning one overlooked place into the very centre of the world.

'A novel brimming with rough poetry, heart and mischief' — FERDIA LENNON