We Pretty Pieces of Flesh - by Colwill Brown

Book Synopsis

"This lacerating, exhilarating debut novel . . . manages to be both boisterous and bleak, life-enhancing and life-denying, familiar and yet wholly original. It feels essential. You will probably read nothing else like it this year."
--The Guardian

"A brilliant portrait of female friendship, nearly the equal in honesty and subtlety to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

An exuberant and ribald debut novel about three adolescent girls, as sweetly vulnerable as they are cunning and tough, coming of age in a gritty postindustrial town in nineties Yorkshire, England

"Ask anyone non-Northern, they'll only know Donny as punchline 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. 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 plotting a course to uni; or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace--the girls are inseparable, their friendship 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 Yorkshire dialect that brings a place and its people magnificently to life, Colwill Brown's debut novel spans decades as its heroines come of age, never shying from the ugly truths of girlhood. Like Trainspotting and Shuggie Bain, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh tracks hard-edged lives and makes them sing, turning one overlooked and forgotten town into the very center of the world.

Review Quotes

One of Oprah Daily's "Best New Books to Read This Spring"
One of Debutiful's "Most Anticipated Debut Books of 2025"

"Ferociously good debut. . . its gloriously individual voice makes this standout first novel glow with vigor and hope."
--Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"Dazzling debut . . . We don't know the last book that captured teenage girlhood and female friendship this deftly."
--Oprah Daily

"This lacerating, exhilarating debut novel . . . manages to be both boisterous and bleak, life-enhancing and life-denying, familiar and yet wholly original. It feels essential. You will probably read nothing else like it this year."
--Catherine Taylor, The Guardian

"A brilliant portrait of female friendship, nearly the equal in honesty and subtlety to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Like the most beguiling fiction about friendship and girlhood, Brown's heartful, humane debut will pull readers in and make them wonder how anyone survives either."
--Booklist (starred review)

"Indelible. . . . This sharp and tender novel teems with life."
--Publishers Weekly

"With this debut, Colwill Brown announces herself as unforgettable. The music and precision of her language, the fun and fervor of her characters, all these things make We Pretty Pieces of Flesh a wondrous, luminous novel."
--Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of the National Book Award finalist Chain-Gang All-Stars

"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

"Following Kel, Shaz and Rach's lives from childhood to adulthood is a bit like watching King Lear being acted out every day. The stakes are so high, the passions so deep, the triumphs so vivid, but happily, in the face of many missed buses and betrayals, they have each other and another voddy and kebab. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is one of the most remarkable portraits I've ever read of friendship."
--Margot Livesey, author of The Road from Belhaven

"Colwill Brown is, simply, brilliant and original on every level; I haven't read a first book that floored me so thoroughly since Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is astonishing, as hilarious and wrenching as life itself. Her characters and sentences knock around my brain still, moving, unsettling, indelible. She is a writer like nobody else."
--Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Hero of This Book and the National Book Award Finalist The Giant's House

"Blistering, brilliant, savage and smart. This is a superb debut and Colwill Brown is the real thing."
--Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing

"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. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is a rare wonder of a book and Colwill Brown is a writer of astounding originality."
--Edward Carey, author of Edith Holler

"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

"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

About the Author

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 Fellowship, and an MA in English literature from Boston College. Her work has appeared in Granta, Prairie Schooner, and other publications and has received scholarships, awards, and support from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Hedgebrook, Ragdale, the Anderson Center, GrubStreet Center for Creative Writing, 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.