Colwill Brown’s We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is full of Yorkshire vocabulary that will fascinate American readers. There’s “aught,” for example, which can either mean “anything” or “nothing” depending on the context.
The word that I find myself dwelling on, though, is “sozlike.” It’s a form of “sorry,” but that “like” is in there at every instance, making the expression sound conditional. I’m sorry, like…I’m, like, sorry?
Among the three girls at the center of Brown’s debut novel, the expression is sometimes made in the form of a simple shrug, omitting the explicit apology altogether. That’s a function of how well the girls know each other — mere body language is enough — but it can also be read as a symptom of a culture where neither emotional vulnerability nor self-expression are particularly prized.
That’s doubly true for women, as described by the narrator (or narrators, depending on your interpretation) of We Pretty Pieces of Flesh. Girls such as Rach, Shaz, and Kel are raised to understand that their bodies are what matter most about them in every important sense: their bodies are what boys lust for, what parents police, what peers punish. Speak your mind, and your body will pay the price.
Jumping times and places, Colwill maps the three friends’ progressions from late-1990s tweens to latter-day adults. When young, the girls’ friendship is a kaleidoscope of intense, shifting loyalties; in adulthood, they grow apart but reunite to see if they can be honest enough about their past to support one another in the future.
The authentic Yorkshire language is foundational to the narrative, establishing the girls’ world and later serving as a measure of how far they have (or haven’t) traveled from it. The author narrates the audiobook with a deliberately flat baseline affect, spiking as various incidents animate the characters. I’ve never experienced an audiobook where the specific delivery is so integral, and the use of language so novel to my ears, that I can’t even imagine what the words would look like printed on a page.
To describe the plot in broad strokes, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh could be a typical coming-of-age novel. What distinguishes the book, in addition to its vivid sense of place, is the craft Colwill brings to each vignette. Whether describing the friends’ outing to the Doncaster Dome ice rink (peerless venue for teenage drama) or Kel’s snowy adult idyll with a Boston polyamorist, Colwill shapes the episodes like short stories: with enough detail and shades of meaning that each could be complete in itself.
When Kel returns to Yorkshire after years living in the States, Shaz — the most undiluted Doncasterian of the three — notes how Kel’s accent won’t quite snap back to its original strength, no matter how hard the returning native tries. Kel has been wounded during her time away, but she’s also demonstrated a degree of independence her friends have yet to achieve.
When America betrays her, though, Yorkshire pulls Kel back to the waiting arms of her friends. Whether the women can effectively support each other, in a world that still only sees them all as pretty pieces of flesh, is this unforgettable novel’s unanswered question.
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