“Listen. Sometimes you’ve just got to put on a Breton top and a bit of lipstick, get behind a wheel and get the fuck as far away as possible from the person you shagged last night. It’s basic science.”

Listen, sometimes you’ve got to just put aside an afternoon and read Emma Jane Unsworth.

I suspect that I am older than Unsworth’s target audience. Just slightly. It doesn’t matter, because her books firmly resonate.

Her latest novel, Slags, tells the story of sisters, Sarah and Juliette, who decide to take a road trip through the Scottish Highlands in an old camper van, to celebrate Juliette’s birthday. Their plans include taking in the scenery, visiting whiskey distilleries, and having a few deep-and-meaningfuls. Sarah is escaping poor lifestyle choices, Juliette is reflecting on the grind of her marriage and motherhood, and both have childhood trauma to navigate.

The story switches between Sarah at age 15 and at age 41, highlighting how decisions made set us on a particular path. Teenage Sarah obsesses over her English teacher (the first-person confessional chapters had me cringing). Adult Sarah is single, making a poor attempt at sobriety, and is annoyed that her friends no longer want to party (‘…everyone was thinking about their gut health, or their crochet, or the state of the economy’).

I am a huge fan of Unsworth. Her writing makes me laugh out loud and cry –

“He looks like a man who enjoys a kiwi vape but only outside the house.” Twenty years of dating gained you a lot of analytics.

But what I love most about Unsworth’s writing is her very particular ability to capture the nuances of female relationships. The dialogue, the small acts of care and the tiny betrayals reveal so much. Her previous stories have focused on friendships, whereas Slags is all about family – the sometimes fraught, but fiercely loyal, relationship between the sisters, and how both women understand their parents. It demonstrates the fact that children can grow up in the same household, and yet have vastly different experiences and memories.

“For me, being a mother and having a mother are intricately interconnected. … Boomer parents told their X-er and millennial daughters they could do it all, but they forgot to tell their sons to pull their weight as fathers. So you have all these burnt-out women. Fucked. Furious at their husbands. And their husbands have no idea why. They’re fucking outraged, too. They weren’t prepared for this. And THAT is why I have these fucking haemorrhoids.”
“I blame Mum for everything too,” said Sarah.

Sarah and Juliette’s mother is a minor character but nevertheless has a large impact. Sarah remembers her as neglectful, but believes that what she endured paved the way for Juliette to have a better experience. As an adult, Sarah is more forgiving –

She thought of their mother. Her attempts to run away had been aborted dashes to the bus stop. Angry walks around the park. Stomping out and returning, a few hours later, with a cake and a wet face. She couldn’t do it, she couldn’t run. There was a tenderness now, thinking of her in the stocks of domesticity. 

There is a nostalgic element to Slags, that’s initially rose-coloured –

The 90s were beautiful, though. The freedom. We memorised phone numbers. We memorised directions. No one knew what we looked like. No one knew our reasons. No one could reach us. We were gods – and we didn’t know it.

However, as the story unfolds, we see how the ‘freedoms’ that Sarah and Juliette had as teens, also left them vulnerable.

Teenage girls had wills of iron and hearts of glass.

Unsworth explores the complex and darker sides of her characters while still keeping the reader firmly on their team. I loved every (uncomfortable, raw, relatable, funny) moment and cannot wait for her next novel.

4.5/5

“Maybe you should try cheese,” I say.
Juliette ignores me. “It’s a fucking outrage. I am still outraged. I fucking love them, you know. But I’m fucking outraged. Tell you the other thing motherhood did. It took away my instincts, repackaged them, and sold them back to me.”
“I think those two things can coexist in a person. Outrage and love. It’s my modus operandi.” … We buy ash-coated goat’s cheese and fig biscuits. Children of our time.