Little scratch A novel

Watson experiments with line breaks, repetition, and columns to express the unnamed narrator's frenetic consciousness over a single day in this inventive, immersive debut. The narrator wakes with memories of an uncomfortable sexual encounter, after dreaming about it from an out-of-body perspective. Meanwhile, she registers a persistent itch that causes her to scratch herself raw ("blood under my nails from fucking scratching in my sleep"). As the novel progresses through the narrator's routine and commute to her unsatisfying job at a London news agency ("got to do this thing again, the waking up thing, the day thing, the work thing"), she struggles to resist scratching her arms and legs. Competing thoughts often run parallel in two columns, with intensity indicated in all caps and dialogue in italics. Watson's clever convention and set pieces are not simply flourishes but integral to the plot and themes. There's much relatable humor in the heroine's everyday snafus, such as her struggle for coherence while speaking with a male colleague, and a tedious task with a glue stick, the low point of her workday. The tone shifts as the narrator begins to consider that she was raped, and the last third of the novel becomes genuinely harrowing and unsettling. Watson's haunting, virtuosic performance is well worth a look. (Aug.)

An ordinary day in an ordinary life rendered thought by thought. The unnamed narrator of this debut novel is an Everywoman: She wakes up a little hungover; she hurries to be on time for a soul-crushing job; she scrolls through her Twitter feed with compulsive frequency; she loves but does not quite trust her boyfriend; she has recently been raped. At first the reality of this unsettlingly commonplace assault is cloaked in our narrator's more long-standing anxieties, which take the form of intrusive thoughts literally intruding on the page from the right-hand margin. As a way of representing the cacophony of the character's perceptions, British author Watson has created an unusual layout for her words, using not only the traditional left-hand justification but also right-hand justification and centered text as well as lots of negative space, different font sizes, and other typographical pyrotechnics. The physical form of the narrative reproduces the experience of the woman's scattered thoughts, sensory responses, invasive memories, fears, hopes, untrammeled bodily uprisings, text messages, and internet browsing history, which overlap, interrupt each other, merge, and battle in the saturated "now" of the book's overwhelming immediacy. The result is an unusual reading experience which relates both the mundane (every drip of the narrator's morning shower, every step of her commute) and the revelatory ("When I write a diary…it was always there--the other--the performance of writing! I write thinking someone is looking in, translate my thoughts into something a little prettier, more heightened than my actual head…as if the diary isn't even for me"). As the day wears on in a series of tea breaks and bathroom trips, the narrator's efforts to mitigate the damage of her assault, her deep desire to return to a sense of normalcy, and her struggle to tell her boyfriend what it is that happened to her underscore the outrages of the everyday--a dissonant now that cannot be silenced or slowed. A daring book whose innovations are balanced by the sad familiarity of its pain. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

look at me now lost in linearity, where is the freedom in my head, to not have to only move side to side, stuck in straight lines every morning once I've arrived in this office, breaking myself in every morning, having to loosen the numbness punch by punch but yes I can feel my head loosening, freeing, it's always this way, numbness ebbs, visits, interrupts, but always pushed down eventually taking my head away, but always giving it back (or do I wrench it back? I am not sure but I am tired certainly, so I might have been wrenching), takes a while to unstick, colleague passing, who always makes tea for the assistant in the corner, who, I wonder, perhaps knows everything, it seems so, in her soft look, her incessant tea and the no questions, no questions, apart from tea, and sometimes noting things that she likes, today my shoes her, nice shoes! patent t-bars that I rather like myself me, aw, thank you! (obviously) they're from Tesco but don't tell anyone her, your secret's safe with me and she's away, me still not even sure what she does, her name beginning with R, likely Rachel although that doesn't sound right, someone called her over once after she left my desk (she was probably pausing to offer me tea or compliment my dress), and I remember thinking I MUST REMEMBER HER NAME but all that's left now is the R I would conclude that she's imagined, except I imagine that if I were to imagine people they'd make less small talk, do something more radical, incite Gregorian chant, my subconscious trying to find an escape route, a way to be sent out of this place for good (and a chant filling the newsroom might do the trick), I don't think I'd imagine someone nice, I'd know I was imagining it straight away, nah I don't buy it, I'd tell my imagined colleague, just not a believable character I'm afraid, the critics would slate you ignoring, admittedly, the fact that she does exist, her and the flecked auburn falling across her back, the white of her eyes even whiter than her skin (her paleness not a weakness, not prone to illness, just pale), I'm still in my argument (with myself inside my head) ignoring the fact that all of that exists, all of her exists, those eyes that hair those soft looks that seem to say I know I know I know, all exist and thus she is believable, is real even, but yes, after all, often those that are real are the ones that, when imagined up, don't quite fit, don't quite work and she is gone now after all shoes still on my feet her gone wondering the difference between a woman saying nice shoes a woman I do not know very well at all no and a man I do not know very well at all saying nice shoes I guess if a man says a certain sort of man that is, I can't say for sure, can't tell you how to know, just that you'll know when you know, that it's that sort of man, yes, when that sort of man says nice shoes he is not saying nice shoes he is saying I am itemising you he is saying, take yourself out of that head and put your eyes in my sockets because hello I am itemising you like yesterday that man rapping the side of his stand selling caramel nuts me sitting nearby propped on the side by the river ten minutes before I needed to go back to my desk reading and then him, suddenly, rapping the side, rap rap rap, me head down ignoring, him rapping the side, me looking up and beaming at me, nothing more, just wanting to grin, to show his presence when I was finally for a moment not present anywhere what are those moments called? some would call them niceties I guess but I just hear the knock against the side of his stand with his fist (clenched), needing me to notice, to be interrupted, to give the attention I was so set on giving elsewhere I know if I told this anecdote I'd stress the nuance, if I were to tell my him about it, as I often end up doing, telling that is (although not other things but this digression is not something I am going into), I'd embellish, I'd say !HE LOOKED ME UP AND DOWN!, or !he said PHWOAR LIKE A BIT OF THAT!, adding any detail to support my side so there is no chance he'd doubt, no chance he'd say, Well what's wrong with a man wanting to smile at you on a sunny day? the answer is obviously a lot A LOT IS WRONG WITH THAT but I don't have the words I can't unpick Excerpted from Little Scratch: A Novel by Rebecca Watson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.