We Pretty Pieces of Flesh

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

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

Ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punch line 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. They share everything, from blagging their way into nightclubs to taking pregnancy tests at Family Planning when they’re late. 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 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.

Written in a South Yorkshire dialect that brings a place and its people magnificently to life, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh takes you by the hand and drags 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.

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

© Colwill Brown 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025