We Pretty Pieces of Flesh

Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

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 it’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 the girls 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, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh spans decades 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, turning one overlooked and forgotten place into the very center of the world.