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A Novel
by Colwill Brown
An exuberant and ribald debut novel about three adolescent girls, as sweetly vulnerable as they are cunning and tough, coming of age in a gritty postindustrial town in nineties Yorkshire, England.
"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 Doncaster's also the home of Rach, Shaz, and Kel, bezzies since childhood and 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 they grow up and away from each other, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart.
Written in a Yorkshire dialect that brings a place and its people magnificently to life, Colwill Brown's debut novel spans decades as its heroines come of age, never shying from the ugly truths of girlhood. Like Trainspotting and Shuggie Bain, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh tracks hard-edged lives and makes them sing, turning one overlooked and forgotten town into the very center of the world.
"Brown perceptively chronicles the shifting power dynamics of the girls' teenage years and then their separate odysseys...A moving conclusion opens old wounds but suggests healing is possible for women who have meant so much to each other for so long. A brilliant portrait of female friendship, nearly the equal in honesty and subtlety to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Like the most beguiling fiction about friendship and girlhood, Brown's heartful, humane debut will pull readers in and make them wonder how anyone survives either." ―Booklist (starred review)
"English writer Brown wraps an indelible picture of life in South Yorkshire in the aughts around the story of three women's enduring but fraught friendship...This sharp and tender novel teems with life." —Publishers Weekly
"With this debut, Colwill Brown announces herself as unforgettable. The music and precision of her language, the fun and fervor of her characters, all of these things make We Pretty Pieces of Flesh a wondrous, luminous novel." ―Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of the National Book Award finalist Chain-Gang All-Stars
"Following Kel, Shaz and Rach's lives from childhood to adulthood is a bit like watching King Lear being acted out every day. The stakes are so high, the passions so deep, the triumphs so vivid but happily, in the face of many missed buses and betrayals, they have each other and another voddie and kebab. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is one of the most remarkable portraits I've ever read of friendship." ―Margot Livesey, author of The Road from Belhaven
"Tender and raucous, Shaz, Kel and Rach's friendship is brilliantly realized. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is a novel brimming with rough poetry, heart and mischief." ―Ferdia Lennon, author of Glorious Exploits
This information about We Pretty Pieces of Flesh was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Colwill Brown was born and raised in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, and is now based in the United States. She holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she received a James A. Michener Fellowship, and an MA in English literature from Boston College. Her work has appeared in Granta, Prairie Schooner, and other publications and has received scholarships, awards, and support from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Hedgebrook, the Ragdale Foundation, the Anderson Center, GrubStreet Center for Creative Writing, and elsewhere. For fifteen years she's lived with ME/CFS, a debilitating neurological disease triggered by a virus that, due to systemic medical neglect, currently has no treatment. A proud Donny lass, she claims to have played bass guitar in (nearly) every rock venue on South Yorkshire's toilet circuit.
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