We Pretty Pieces of Flesh

A Novel

by Colwill Brown

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Pub Date Mar 04 2025 | Archive Date Apr 04 2025

Henry Holt & Company | Henry Holt and Co.

General Fiction (Adult)

Description

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, Colwill Brown’s 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.

Advance Praise

“Colwill Brown is, simply, brilliant and original on every level; I haven’t read a first book that floored me so thoroughly since Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is astonishing, as hilarious and wrenching as life itself. Her characters and sentences knock around my brain still, moving, unsettling, indelible. She is a writer like nobody else.”

—Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Hero of This Book

“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

“We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is an incendiary debut, brutal and beautiful in equal measure—Colwill Brown's intimate exploration of the hard, funny lives of her three protagonists is an absolute must-read, particularly for fans of Shuggie Bain, Milkman, and Catherine Hardwicke.”

—Rafe Posey, Eagle Harbor Book Co, Bainbridge Island, WA