We Pretty Pieces of Flesh
Click to look inside
The feel-good place to buy books
We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown
***Shortlisted for The Goldsmiths Prize 2025*** ***Longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize*** 'It feels essential. You will read nothing else like it this year' GUARDIAN 'Blistering, brilliant, savage and smart' EIMEAR McBRIDE From the winner of the BBC National Short Story Award 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 trips to the Family Planning clinic when they are 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. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh takes you by the hand and leads 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. 'A novel brimming with rough poetry, heart and mischief' FERDIA LENNON 'Unforgettable...a wondrous, luminous novel' NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH 'Brilliant and original on every level... she is a writer like nobody else' ELIZABETH McCRACKEN ‘Electrifying… Written in what feels like a new and utterly distinctive female voice, it is very hard to put down’ MARK HADDON
Blistering, brilliant, savage and smartThis is a superb debut and Colwill Brown is the real thing -- EIMEAR McBRIDE, author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing
With this debut, Colwill Brown announces herself as unforgettable... a wondrous, luminous novel -- NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars
Colwill Brown is, simply, brilliant and original on every level... We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is astonishing, as hilarious and wrenching as life itself -- 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
A brilliant portrait of female friendship, nearly the equal in honesty and subtlety to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels * Kirkus (starred review) *
A bold, rowdy, and compelling new voice in fiction -- NAOMI BOOTH, author of Animals at Night
In propulsive, strikingly original prose, Colwill Brown conjures girlhood in all its glittering potential and brutality -- TYLER WETHERALL, author of Amphibian
A big, brave, beautiful scream of a book. It is haunting and hilarious and heartbreaking, so tender, so raw, so deeply felt, so full of insight and sympathy and, above all else, so exquisitely written -- EDWARD CAREY, author of Edith Holler
Colwill Brown is a tremendous writer -- tender and tough, compassionate and sharply funny. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is extraordinary -- I grew to love Rach, Kel and Shaz as if they were my own childhood friends. A blazingly brilliant novel by a writer who, luckily for us, is just getting started -- MOLLY ANTOPOL, author of The UnAmericans
Colwill Brown's We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is a kinetic and incantatory portrait of the rough-and-tumble world of girlhood. I fell headlong for the tough, vulnerable, and whip-smart characters at the center of this spectacularly original debut -- LAURA VAN DEN BERG, author of State of Paradise
With this debut, Colwill Brown announces herself as unforgettable... a wondrous, luminous novel -- NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars
Colwill Brown is, simply, brilliant and original on every level... We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is astonishing, as hilarious and wrenching as life itself -- 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
A brilliant portrait of female friendship, nearly the equal in honesty and subtlety to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels * Kirkus (starred review) *
A bold, rowdy, and compelling new voice in fiction -- NAOMI BOOTH, author of Animals at Night
In propulsive, strikingly original prose, Colwill Brown conjures girlhood in all its glittering potential and brutality -- TYLER WETHERALL, author of Amphibian
A big, brave, beautiful scream of a book. It is haunting and hilarious and heartbreaking, so tender, so raw, so deeply felt, so full of insight and sympathy and, above all else, so exquisitely written -- EDWARD CAREY, author of Edith Holler
Colwill Brown is a tremendous writer -- tender and tough, compassionate and sharply funny. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is extraordinary -- I grew to love Rach, Kel and Shaz as if they were my own childhood friends. A blazingly brilliant novel by a writer who, luckily for us, is just getting started -- MOLLY ANTOPOL, author of The UnAmericans
Colwill Brown's We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is a kinetic and incantatory portrait of the rough-and-tumble world of girlhood. I fell headlong for the tough, vulnerable, and whip-smart characters at the center of this spectacularly original debut -- LAURA VAN DEN BERG, author of State of Paradise
Colwill Brown was born and raised in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. She holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she received a James A. Michener Center Fellowship, and an MA in English Literature from Boston College. Her work has appeared in Granta, Prairie Schooner 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.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781784745578 |
| ISBN 10 | 178474557X |
| Title | We Pretty Pieces of Flesh |
| Author | Colwill Brown |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2025-02-20 |
| Number of pages | 336 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |