We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown book review: A dissection of growing up in South Yorkshire

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown: The review

I’ve never read a book written in my own accent before, and I probably never will again. That’s only one of the reasons that I was drawn to We Pretty Pieces of Flesh: this somewhat experimental novel focuses on three girls from Doncaster, the next town up from where I grew up (and still live).

It’s a bit jarring to read something written how you talk, and even though it’s in *my* accent I still had to take my time with it, make sure I was taking every word in, mouthing them out as I read through. It took me probably twice as long as it would normally, but it was worth every minute. I’ve loved this.

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh tells the story of Rach, Kel and Shaz, following them from their first day of secondary school up to being in their 30s. It’s non-linear, jumping between moments of their lives, going between the past and present, and even switching between perspectives. Some sections are written in first person, some in third — even some using second person ‘you’, which I loved.

While it’s sometimes meandering — there’s no great plot to unfurl — every beat of We Pretty Pieces of Flesh had me hooked. It’s a dissection of class, of growing up in a working-class town, of girlhood, of becoming a woman, of achieving your dreams (or never having any dreams in the first place). Each of the three girls here is very real, brought to life in great detail, and they all offer a contrast from each other. It’s easy to imagine that Colwill has based them on people she knew growing up, coming from Doncaster herself.

Rach and Kel have known each other since they were babies (‘babbies’), while Shaz met them both on the first day of secondary school. She’s from a rougher part of town than Rach and Kel, and while the three of them have shared experiences, there’s still a class divide between them. Rach makes her way to Uni to become a teacher, Kel ends up living in the USA, while Shaz stays in Doncaster, drifting from one dead-end-job to another, barely making ends meet.

Much of the book focuses on the girls’ time at school, though, and it’s a shockingly realistic lens of life as a teenage girl. There’s talk of getting your first period, of wanting to feel special in front of ‘the lads’, of wanting attention, of not wanting attention, the desire to just ‘fit in’ and neither be an outcast or the centre of attention. Colwill has nailed what it feels like to be a teenage girl. It’s raw, it’s real, and every page of this hit me right in the gut.

It’s sometimes difficult to read; the picture it paints of growing up in South Yorkshire is sometimes a little too on-the-nose. There are some tough sections to get through including mentions of SA, but even just the grittiness of working-class life, the mentions of ‘zombies’ on the streets of Doncaster, drug and alcohol use, the reliance on it, the struggling to make ends meet — it all hits home. Shaz, Kel and Rach might not be real, but there are people out there just like them. Their words, thoughts and feelings are about as real as you can get, and this is a novel that’s going to stick with me for a long time.

This review is based on an ARC of We Pretty Pieces of Flesh provided by Netgalley.