WE PRETTY PIECES OF FLESH

The complicated relationship among three Doncaster lasses.

Written in savory Yorkshire dialect (perfectly comprehensible to non-locals after a page or two), Brown’s first novel follows the trio from age 11 in 1998, when they bond on the first day of “big school,” through a fraught reunion in 2017, when a long-kept secret finally comes out. We begin with Rachael’s first-person recollections of a wild night out in their teens that sketches the social and emotional currents informing their interactions. Rach’s two-parent family sits at the top of the British working class, and as the girls start big school has just moved to a better neighborhood. Kel and Shaz have the “same single mums they called ‘mam,’ same state-sponsored quid-a-day [lunch] money, same missing dads.” In Rach’s view, Shaz is the tough girl who knows more and dares more, though Rach also thinks she lies about some of her escapades and isn’t afraid to say so, while Kel anxiously tries to keep the peace. When the novel switches to Shaz’s point of view, a second-person narration that reflects her alienated psychological state, we see that to her Rach is the solid, self-assured one clearly headed for better things. That’s why Shaz can’t reveal a shameful episode involving the boy Rach is dating, “cuz it’s whorish behaviour, innit.” In their world, girls are supposed to be sexually free but not “slags,” and signals are equally mixed about rising out of the working class. Is going to “uni” and getting a decent job making something of yourself, or getting above yourself? There aren’t any definite answers as Brown perceptively chronicles the shifting power dynamics of the girls’ teenage years and then their separate odysseys as Rachael becomes a teacher, Kel moves to America, and Shaz sinks lower and lower with drugs, drink, and lousy jobs. A moving conclusion opens old wounds but suggests healing is possible for women who have meant so much to each other for so long.

A brilliant portrait of female friendship, nearly the equal in honesty and subtlety to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels.