Description
**Shortlisted for The Goldsmiths Prize 2021**
**Shortlisted for The Desmond Elliott Prize 2021**
**An Observer 10 Best Debut Novelists of 2021**
‘An extremely perceptive depiction of power and agency.’ Guardian
‘Startlingly original.’ VOGUE
‘Extraordinary.’ New Yorker
little scratch tells the story of a day in the life of an unnamed woman, living in a lower-case world of demarcated fridge shelves and office politics; clock-watching and WhatsApp notifications. In a voice that is fiercely wry, touchingly delicate and increasingly neurotic, the protagonist relays what it takes to get through the quotidian detail of that single trajectory – from morning to night – while processing recent sexual violence.
little scratch is about the coexistence of monotony with our waking, intelligent lives. It is a powerful evocation of how the external and internal aspects of our lives exist in a helix, and what it means to live out the course of a single day consumed by trauma.
‘Wry, funny and heartbreaking.’ Sophie Mackintosh
‘little scratch is a story that is urgent. It is a story that needs to be told.’ Meena Kandasamy
‘Reads like the cinders settling in the air after an explosion… daring and completely readable.’ Colin Barrett
‘little scratch is a little miracle… impossible to read it and not wish there were more books like it.’ Alan Trotter
‘Confident and vital… little scratch is an absolute gift.’ Naoise Dolan
