What do you think?
Rate this book
little scratch
In the formally experimental tradition of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Ducks, Newburyport comes a dazzlingly original shot-in-the-arm of a novel that reveals one young woman's every thought over the course of twenty-four hours.
little scratch tells the story of an unnamed woman living in a world of office politics, clock-watching and emoji-texting as she relays what it takes to get through mundanity in the wake of a recent sexual assault.
Formatted in continuously interweaving columns that chart the feedback loop of memory, the senses, and modern distractions with witty precision, our narrator becomes increasingly anxious as the day moves on; and increasingly intent on distracting herself. Must she really drink eight glasses of water a day to stay hydrated? Does the word "rape" apply to what happened to her? Why is the etiquette of the women's bathroom so fraught? Does the colleague who keeps offering to make her tea know something? And why can't she stop scratching?
Fiercely moving and slyly profound, little scratch is a fearless and defiantly playful look at how our minds function in-- and survive--the darkest moments.
little scratch tells the story of an unnamed woman living in a world of office politics, clock-watching and emoji-texting as she relays what it takes to get through mundanity in the wake of a recent sexual assault.
Formatted in continuously interweaving columns that chart the feedback loop of memory, the senses, and modern distractions with witty precision, our narrator becomes increasingly anxious as the day moves on; and increasingly intent on distracting herself. Must she really drink eight glasses of water a day to stay hydrated? Does the word "rape" apply to what happened to her? Why is the etiquette of the women's bathroom so fraught? Does the colleague who keeps offering to make her tea know something? And why can't she stop scratching?
Fiercely moving and slyly profound, little scratch is a fearless and defiantly playful look at how our minds function in-- and survive--the darkest moments.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 14, 2021
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 526 reviews
October 27, 2021
little scratch made made me work hard, and I'm not sure it has a 'payoff' in a traditional novelistic sense. The language is spiky and fragmentary and the storytelling style approaches its subject--a woman trying to cope with the trauma of sexual abuse--in a manner that mirrors that shattering dislocation.
Many of the pages scan like poetry, which made me want to slow down and read it like a poem. But then I realized that a faster reading pace--the pace of thought--was a much better way to appreciate the novel, and to grasp its meanings. I needed to train myself to read this book.
I also needed to stop questioning what the author is up to, and whether she succeeds. I needed to drop all judgment and expectation. As I read, I kept comparing the novel with other literary experiments with stream-of-consciousness and/or auto-writing, and finding this novel to be relatively artless by comparison, but I just needed to cut it out. I'm comparing it with, you know, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce and perhaps a bit with Gertrude Stein, and in all of these authors' cases their language is no longer surprising...we've learned how to read Joyce by now, like the way we learned to hear Stravinsky without throwing rotten fruit at the stage and walking out, When I began the novel I didn't know how to read Rebecca Watson. By the end. I did, which makes it a perfect candidate for a re-read.
Many of the pages scan like poetry, which made me want to slow down and read it like a poem. But then I realized that a faster reading pace--the pace of thought--was a much better way to appreciate the novel, and to grasp its meanings. I needed to train myself to read this book.
I also needed to stop questioning what the author is up to, and whether she succeeds. I needed to drop all judgment and expectation. As I read, I kept comparing the novel with other literary experiments with stream-of-consciousness and/or auto-writing, and finding this novel to be relatively artless by comparison, but I just needed to cut it out. I'm comparing it with, you know, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce and perhaps a bit with Gertrude Stein, and in all of these authors' cases their language is no longer surprising...we've learned how to read Joyce by now, like the way we learned to hear Stravinsky without throwing rotten fruit at the stage and walking out, When I began the novel I didn't know how to read Rebecca Watson. By the end. I did, which makes it a perfect candidate for a re-read.
July 3, 2021
Although interesting, the format of this novel made it hard for me to actually enjoy it, instead it felt like a chore and I was glad that it’s rather short. As a result of this unusual format, it’s probably not a book for everyone.
However this original format could be ground breaking for other readers and I have to say that the subject matter is important.
However this original format could be ground breaking for other readers and I have to say that the subject matter is important.
October 21, 2021
little scratch is a refreshingly innovative work from Rebecca Watson who uses non-linear typography to depict the thoughts and events competing for her narrator’s attention. This structure is a particularly compelling way to deconstruct the traditionally male-dominated linear form and also reflects the themes Watson explores, primarily the impact of sexual assault on a survivor. As readers, we see how that experience manifests both physically and mentally. Despite the heavy subject matter, there are some lighter touches, such as the kindhearted co-worker who may be a spectre of the author herself. Not everyone who’s left a review appears to be keen on the experimental typography, but little scratch is a groundbreaking work that tells an all-too-common story in a new and powerful way.
September 23, 2024
Expertly capturing everyday life and the workings of the mind, while also addressing #metoo in an experimental yet accessible way
Claustrophobia in your own head
little scratch brings us into a day in the life of a woman making her way in the workforce of London, dealing with sexual harassment and her own thoughts.
Scratching as a bodily reaction to her environment, and a not very healthy relationship with food, are signals that not all is well, and her assistant job at a newspaper features an abusive boss. However far from gloomy or heavy, Rebecca Watson brings a lot of humor in the book. The audiobook read by her is very well done, you feel the mood of the narrator shift and change and can really immerse in her rambling, ever active mind.
Besides hilarious passages taken right from ordinary life, we also get to see how whatsapp forms the main platform for the main character to fret over her relationship with her "Him".
She does feel rather obsessive, with a lot of swearing, but her environment is definitely contributing to this, with her boss saying to her about a lunch: That steak, Jesus Christ, bloodier than a tampon
The poetry reading awkwardness is hilarious, but the musings around how to deal with rape are a very ample counterweight, brought in a claustrophobic manner, with thoughts like:
Yes I was raped, but at least I am not dead
Your proud and unraped girlfriend
Is silence lying?
Still life goes on, peeing especially seems to be the activity coming back consistently.
An exciting and sharp debut, engaging with an important topic without losing humor.
I'll gladly round the 3.5 stars up.
Claustrophobia in your own head
little scratch brings us into a day in the life of a woman making her way in the workforce of London, dealing with sexual harassment and her own thoughts.
Scratching as a bodily reaction to her environment, and a not very healthy relationship with food, are signals that not all is well, and her assistant job at a newspaper features an abusive boss. However far from gloomy or heavy, Rebecca Watson brings a lot of humor in the book. The audiobook read by her is very well done, you feel the mood of the narrator shift and change and can really immerse in her rambling, ever active mind.
Besides hilarious passages taken right from ordinary life, we also get to see how whatsapp forms the main platform for the main character to fret over her relationship with her "Him".
She does feel rather obsessive, with a lot of swearing, but her environment is definitely contributing to this, with her boss saying to her about a lunch: That steak, Jesus Christ, bloodier than a tampon
The poetry reading awkwardness is hilarious, but the musings around how to deal with rape are a very ample counterweight, brought in a claustrophobic manner, with thoughts like:
Yes I was raped, but at least I am not dead
Your proud and unraped girlfriend
Is silence lying?
Still life goes on, peeing especially seems to be the activity coming back consistently.
An exciting and sharp debut, engaging with an important topic without losing humor.
I'll gladly round the 3.5 stars up.
October 6, 2021
Now as predicted shortlisted for the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize.
This debut novel - now included in the influential annual Observer first novelist article - will I think be one of the most innovative I read in 2021 – and I would be not be surprised to see it featuring on Prize lists including the Goldsmith. The Goldsmith was of course won in its first year by Eimear McBride’s harrowing stream-of-consciousness novel “A Girl is a Half Formed Thing” which is the only time ever I have listened to an audiobook as a way of gaining entry to a book I had found it difficult to access in print (just for reference in a typical year I read around 150 novels and listen to 0 audiobooks) – allowing me then to read the novel.
So when I heard of this novel – with its experimental stream-of-consciousness rendering on the page of the thoughts of a woman suffering trauma, a book very much about voice and which it is impossible to read other than aloud in one’s head – I was delighted to be able to both buy the novel in print but also to source a copy of the Audiobook (narrated by the author herself) - with thanks to W.F. Howes Ltd via NetGalley.
The style of this book I should stress is very different – rather than McBride’s relentlessness assault of fragmentary sentences and inventive language, we have here intersecting, sometimes parallel, sometimes intervleaved threads of internal monologue but also What’s App exchanges, emails, trip advisor reviews, poems, railway annoucements, brief conversations – all written in everyday language, thought and speech. The look and particularly spacing of the text on the page is itself part of the effect- and very different again to McBride’s wall of text. And the voice too very different in both animation and accent (Southern English, twenty-something, well educated).
The unnamed narrator is an assistant for an unnamed international newspaper – and the story is one Friday in her life, starting with her awakening, slightly hungover, through to her drifting to post-coital sleep. Most of it takes place in her “dreaded” office – and much of the background detail will be very familiar to any London based white collar worker. There though, and what gives the book its propulsive power, the spectre of her sexist boss and a rape (which he blithely will not acknowledge and which the narrator has still not disclosed – including to her “Him” her boyfriend) hangs over her.
The form follows both from the book’s set up and from trying to capture the multi-tasking digital world in which we now exist, the author said in an FT article she authored on the art of fiction in the age of social media “When I started writing my own novel, incorporating this digital compulsion was one of the first issues I ran into. I was writing a book that aimed to follow the mind of a woman in her twenties, nonstop, so ignoring it would be a plot hole. But quickly, I found that it opened up my protagonist, created a portal to others while still keeping her isolated. It inspired me to shake up form; the pressures of an age of distraction making me break up prose into columns and fragments.”
The story originally started life as a prize shortlisted short story – and that story forms the midpoint of the day and is reproduced in full in the novel and gives a good sense of the book – much better than I think I have or can manage or that the formatting on Goodreads easily allows.
https://www.thewhitereview.org/fictio...
There are some clever touches in the book.
Even as I wrote the review it was tempting to refer to elements of the plot that fit closely what I understand of the author’s life and experiences (in a way I am all too conscious I am far more likely to do with a female rather than make author). And very knowingly by the author the one time when the book diverts to a WhatsApp group chat (otherwise the narrator leaves them unread, instead just communicating with her Mum and her Him) it is for a brief discussion on female auto-fiction.
Further then is a benign colleague in the book – who checks in on the narrator occasionally, especially when she senses she is particularly distressed – and this colleague is effectively, in many senses, I believe the author, rather than the narrator.
The text (as my opening and closing quotes show) brings in ideas of linearity (of lack of it) in thought and conventionality in writing (for example when the narrator finds some notes discarded by a colleague in the women’s toilet bin).
Overall I thought this was an excellent and impactful book treating an important if difficult subject –#MeToo and sexual assault in the workplace and female agency in the face of male obliviousness.
And finally to which media to approach it in ..
The author herself, announcing the upcoming audiobook, tweeted recently something which very much captured my different experiences with the novel and the audiobook “It was a strange thing to record as the text is so much about encouraging the reader to make decisions and learn patterns. Instead, it becomes a performance, but it still demands attention and, I think, works. I always heard it in a voice!”. If there is a difficulty in accessing the text it is in deciding how to read when there are two different sections interleaved – do you read each in series or attempt them in parallel (or – which I think is the most appropriate – pick according to context). The audiobook – while still retaining the idea of interleaving threads – makes this choice for you, which both brings you closer to the author’s own choices (and much closer to the narrator’s true voice) but also I think removes some of the reader’s agency.
So my recommendation – buy them both.
look at me now lost in linearity, where is the freedom in my head, to not to only have to 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 gets pushed down eventually taking my head away, but always giving it back (or do I wrench it back? ….
This debut novel - now included in the influential annual Observer first novelist article - will I think be one of the most innovative I read in 2021 – and I would be not be surprised to see it featuring on Prize lists including the Goldsmith. The Goldsmith was of course won in its first year by Eimear McBride’s harrowing stream-of-consciousness novel “A Girl is a Half Formed Thing” which is the only time ever I have listened to an audiobook as a way of gaining entry to a book I had found it difficult to access in print (just for reference in a typical year I read around 150 novels and listen to 0 audiobooks) – allowing me then to read the novel.
So when I heard of this novel – with its experimental stream-of-consciousness rendering on the page of the thoughts of a woman suffering trauma, a book very much about voice and which it is impossible to read other than aloud in one’s head – I was delighted to be able to both buy the novel in print but also to source a copy of the Audiobook (narrated by the author herself) - with thanks to W.F. Howes Ltd via NetGalley.
The style of this book I should stress is very different – rather than McBride’s relentlessness assault of fragmentary sentences and inventive language, we have here intersecting, sometimes parallel, sometimes intervleaved threads of internal monologue but also What’s App exchanges, emails, trip advisor reviews, poems, railway annoucements, brief conversations – all written in everyday language, thought and speech. The look and particularly spacing of the text on the page is itself part of the effect- and very different again to McBride’s wall of text. And the voice too very different in both animation and accent (Southern English, twenty-something, well educated).
The unnamed narrator is an assistant for an unnamed international newspaper – and the story is one Friday in her life, starting with her awakening, slightly hungover, through to her drifting to post-coital sleep. Most of it takes place in her “dreaded” office – and much of the background detail will be very familiar to any London based white collar worker. There though, and what gives the book its propulsive power, the spectre of her sexist boss and a rape (which he blithely will not acknowledge and which the narrator has still not disclosed – including to her “Him” her boyfriend) hangs over her.
The form follows both from the book’s set up and from trying to capture the multi-tasking digital world in which we now exist, the author said in an FT article she authored on the art of fiction in the age of social media “When I started writing my own novel, incorporating this digital compulsion was one of the first issues I ran into. I was writing a book that aimed to follow the mind of a woman in her twenties, nonstop, so ignoring it would be a plot hole. But quickly, I found that it opened up my protagonist, created a portal to others while still keeping her isolated. It inspired me to shake up form; the pressures of an age of distraction making me break up prose into columns and fragments.”
The story originally started life as a prize shortlisted short story – and that story forms the midpoint of the day and is reproduced in full in the novel and gives a good sense of the book – much better than I think I have or can manage or that the formatting on Goodreads easily allows.
https://www.thewhitereview.org/fictio...
There are some clever touches in the book.
Even as I wrote the review it was tempting to refer to elements of the plot that fit closely what I understand of the author’s life and experiences (in a way I am all too conscious I am far more likely to do with a female rather than make author). And very knowingly by the author the one time when the book diverts to a WhatsApp group chat (otherwise the narrator leaves them unread, instead just communicating with her Mum and her Him) it is for a brief discussion on female auto-fiction.
Further then is a benign colleague in the book – who checks in on the narrator occasionally, especially when she senses she is particularly distressed – and this colleague is effectively, in many senses, I believe the author, rather than the narrator.
The text (as my opening and closing quotes show) brings in ideas of linearity (of lack of it) in thought and conventionality in writing (for example when the narrator finds some notes discarded by a colleague in the women’s toilet bin).
Overall I thought this was an excellent and impactful book treating an important if difficult subject –#MeToo and sexual assault in the workplace and female agency in the face of male obliviousness.
And finally to which media to approach it in ..
The author herself, announcing the upcoming audiobook, tweeted recently something which very much captured my different experiences with the novel and the audiobook “It was a strange thing to record as the text is so much about encouraging the reader to make decisions and learn patterns. Instead, it becomes a performance, but it still demands attention and, I think, works. I always heard it in a voice!”. If there is a difficulty in accessing the text it is in deciding how to read when there are two different sections interleaved – do you read each in series or attempt them in parallel (or – which I think is the most appropriate – pick according to context). The audiobook – while still retaining the idea of interleaving threads – makes this choice for you, which both brings you closer to the author’s own choices (and much closer to the narrator’s true voice) but also I think removes some of the reader’s agency.
So my recommendation – buy them both.
I know (even whilst thinking) that my writing would make more sense
diary entries that is – notes on experiences or feelings or whatever, not
because my head
is stable or makes particular sense as if but
when I write a diary (when I did) or notes (which has not been for a long time yes great I know) (no not since, nothing since) but when I did, 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, context handily supplied ……….
… that’s why she is so terrifying no unsettling toilet bin note
woman
… it’s all just nonsense, whirring, not connection and toilet woman
thinks that’s fine ? is too obsessed or whatever to want to compose something
composed
September 6, 2020
Hmm, this is a hard one to review because Watson is striving to do something fresh here in attempting to give voice to experience. The topic of sexual trauma is always an important one, and it's complicated here by issues of #metoo power and powerlessness, as well as the impact of rape on an existing loving relationship and with the victim's own body.
While I applaud the way this book approaches a crucial topic of our moment, I didn't feel that the writerly choices made here really move the articulation of experience on. The much-vaunted form of 'stream-of-consciousness' gets bandied around a lot in reviews but, strictly speaking, this is more a free-form internal voice: I don't recognise it as the noise in my head, for example, as this is too grammatically formed, too self-aware and conscious, even laughing at its own little jokes. It's also the case that (and I realise there's no easy way to do this) experience is still translated into words, we're still listening to a mind speaking to itself, not experiencing what happens to a body which might be where the book was trying to go.
It is interesting to use columns to structure parallel events, so one column to quote e.g. reading of texts on the commute while another is the inner commentary on them but the book doesn't escape its own textuality. At times, this feels like an almost send-up of Woolf mashed up with Plath.
A striking experiment, if not completely successful to this reader. Well done, though, to the author and Faber & Faber for taking a risk on this.
While I applaud the way this book approaches a crucial topic of our moment, I didn't feel that the writerly choices made here really move the articulation of experience on. The much-vaunted form of 'stream-of-consciousness' gets bandied around a lot in reviews but, strictly speaking, this is more a free-form internal voice: I don't recognise it as the noise in my head, for example, as this is too grammatically formed, too self-aware and conscious, even laughing at its own little jokes. It's also the case that (and I realise there's no easy way to do this) experience is still translated into words, we're still listening to a mind speaking to itself, not experiencing what happens to a body which might be where the book was trying to go.
It is interesting to use columns to structure parallel events, so one column to quote e.g. reading of texts on the commute while another is the inner commentary on them but the book doesn't escape its own textuality. At times, this feels like an almost send-up of Woolf mashed up with Plath.
A striking experiment, if not completely successful to this reader. Well done, though, to the author and Faber & Faber for taking a risk on this.
November 29, 2021
4.5
This is the second novel I read from the Goldsmiths Prize shortlist. For those who are not aware, the prize is awarded to a piece of fiction that "breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form." little scratch sure fits the bill, although it wasn't the winner.
The stream of consciousness, broken sentences, the disparate layout, the lack of capitalisations and a few other quirks will probably bother many - I personally found it compelling and for me, it was the right kind of challenging - it pushed me a bit without exhausting me, truth be told, I ended up really liking it as it changed and shaped on the page. This is not a book that could be narrated - seeing it on the page is a big part of what makes this novel special.
Told by an unnamed woman, it follows her day as she wakes up after being sexually assaulted.
little scratch is an accomplished novel that is topical, modern and creative.
Recommended to those who enjoy experimental literature.
This is the second novel I read from the Goldsmiths Prize shortlist. For those who are not aware, the prize is awarded to a piece of fiction that "breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form." little scratch sure fits the bill, although it wasn't the winner.
The stream of consciousness, broken sentences, the disparate layout, the lack of capitalisations and a few other quirks will probably bother many - I personally found it compelling and for me, it was the right kind of challenging - it pushed me a bit without exhausting me, truth be told, I ended up really liking it as it changed and shaped on the page. This is not a book that could be narrated - seeing it on the page is a big part of what makes this novel special.
Told by an unnamed woman, it follows her day as she wakes up after being sexually assaulted.
little scratch is an accomplished novel that is topical, modern and creative.
Recommended to those who enjoy experimental literature.
July 8, 2024
Shortlisted for the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize
little scratch is an impressive novel, inventive in form, as the author represents a day in the life of her character via her detailed interior narration, often with internal thoughts and external conversations in literal parallel on the page. and in content a glance into the life of a Whatsapp-generation twenty-something assistant at a media firm and an aspiring writer, with moments of playful comedy mixed in with an underlying hard-hitting message, and disturbing story, of workplace rape.
The novel began in a real incident when the author was asked at work what she was reading and her mind went blank (an experience that resonates), which she turned first into a story, which was shortlisted for The White Review Short-Story Prize, and then into this novel:
The control Watson exercises over the reader's attention is impressive, and it was interesting to see her cite as an influence not Virginia Woolf or Eimear McBride, but rather Javier Marías for his "insane grasp of sentences ... he is just in crazy control of the reader, and has this ability to mentally take you so far, but still reel you back in. I thought about him a lot, just for that control. But also, for the ability to travel like that, to take the reader ten pages away, and then snap them right back where he wants them." (from ).
Watson has both acknowledged the unnamed narrator has certain similarities with her but strongly rejected the auto-fiction label. And it is emblematic of her control of the novel, and her sense of playfulness, that she references this within the text, both with a Group Chat on Whatsapp on auto-fiction and also by inserting herself in the novel as one of the narrator's colleagues "her name beginning with R, likely Rachel although that doesn't sound right", who plays only a minor role, offering her mint-tea, complimenting her shoes and generally being nice, and one that she admits is "just not a believable character, I'm afraid, the critics would slate you."
Overall. 4.5 stars - and a strong contender for the Goldsmiths Prize shortlist. [Addition - which it indeed made!]
Extract, from the original short story, with a nice plug for a book from the wonderful Fitzcarraldo Editions
Sources:
https://www.thewhitereview.org/fictio...
https://hazlitt.net/feature/moments-a...
https://lithub.com/rebecca-watson-on-...
little scratch is an impressive novel, inventive in form, as the author represents a day in the life of her character via her detailed interior narration, often with internal thoughts and external conversations in literal parallel on the page. and in content a glance into the life of a Whatsapp-generation twenty-something assistant at a media firm and an aspiring writer, with moments of playful comedy mixed in with an underlying hard-hitting message, and disturbing story, of workplace rape.
The novel began in a real incident when the author was asked at work what she was reading and her mind went blank (an experience that resonates), which she turned first into a story, which was shortlisted for The White Review Short-Story Prize, and then into this novel:
I began writing this book because I was at work on my lunch break, trying to write. And someone came up to me and did ask me what book I was reading at the moment. And I did have that moment of being like, “Fuck’s sake, what are books? Have I ever read a book in my life?” So that kernel in the book is based on a real moment, one in which I became aware of so many different things that were going on, and how despite everything I was unable to think of anything. And it just clicked into my head, the desire of a writer to guide the reader from the beginning of the paragraph to the end, and wanting to be able to tell them so many different things at the same time and that being impossible. So that first thought as I was writing that moment up was just “How do I show the reader all these different things without having to make them wait?” I wanted to write everything that was going on at the same time in one moment. And I wrote that, then quite quickly after I was like, “Okay, I can do a moment of immediacy. Is it possible to write a full day of immediacy?”
The control Watson exercises over the reader's attention is impressive, and it was interesting to see her cite as an influence not Virginia Woolf or Eimear McBride, but rather Javier Marías for his "insane grasp of sentences ... he is just in crazy control of the reader, and has this ability to mentally take you so far, but still reel you back in. I thought about him a lot, just for that control. But also, for the ability to travel like that, to take the reader ten pages away, and then snap them right back where he wants them." (from ).
Watson has both acknowledged the unnamed narrator has certain similarities with her but strongly rejected the auto-fiction label. And it is emblematic of her control of the novel, and her sense of playfulness, that she references this within the text, both with a Group Chat on Whatsapp on auto-fiction and also by inserting herself in the novel as one of the narrator's colleagues "her name beginning with R, likely Rachel although that doesn't sound right", who plays only a minor role, offering her mint-tea, complimenting her shoes and generally being nice, and one that she admits is "just not a believable character, I'm afraid, the critics would slate you."
Overall. 4.5 stars - and a strong contender for the Goldsmiths Prize shortlist. [Addition - which it indeed made!]
Extract, from the original short story, with a nice plug for a book from the wonderful Fitzcarraldo Editions
Sources:
https://www.thewhitereview.org/fictio...
https://hazlitt.net/feature/moments-a...
https://lithub.com/rebecca-watson-on-...
October 6, 2021
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2021.
Reading little scratch was an adventure.
The creative typesetting in this book is a visual and experiential
! ! ! ! ! ! delight ! ! ! ! ! !
Sometimes
. . the
. . . . text
. . . . . . reads
. . . . . . . . diagonally.
At
other
times
it
reads
vertically.
We often navigate . . . . denoting what the . . . . . consuming
multiple parallel . . . . . narrator is thinking, . . . . on
columns of text . . . . . . reading and . . . . . . . . . . . screen.
A few pages in, and the text starts to feel very natural (to the point where you wonder why this format isn’t more widely used).
The story follows a day in the life of the narrator, a young woman in her 20s who works as an admin assistant in a newsroom. We get her every thought, action and movement, including detailed descriptions of morning ablutions (“plop!” (then faster) plop! plop! plop!”). Once at work, she checks her phone religiously, thinks about her boyfriend frequently and is haunted by the memories of a recent assault, which she has yet to share with others. As in Ducks, Newburyport, a portrait of trauma and anxiety eventually emerges – the text reflecting a disheveled mind, which becomes even more fractured as a result of chronic distractedness.
While the story starts off rather brilliantly, it fell flat for me in the second half. The text ultimately does not do justice to its weighty themes, nor does it achieve a satisfying balance of the profound to the banal. Much of it feels like a short story, stretched too far (incidentally, parts of the text were previously published in short story format). Another issue – perhaps related to the youth of the author – is that Watson does not fully trust her reader. It feels, at times, like a sermon on #metoo and related topics – intended for readers desperately in need of education. (I personally prefer a lighter hammer.)
Despite these niggles, I remain in awe of the innovative structure of the novel – even though it did not, in my opinion, quite reach its full potential.
Mood: Neurotic
Innovation: 10/10
Overall reading experience: 7/10
Also on Instagram.
Some interesting facts about the novel
• Parts of the novel were previously shortlisted for the White Review story prize in 2018.
•The text seems to be partly autobiographical. Like the narrator, Watson has worked at various roles in her life (as an assistant, waitress, cleaner) where she was at the bottom of the power chain: “I have been screamed at, groped, and patronised in various junior jobs. What has always been clear is that while some enjoy the power, others seem to genuinely believe that the divide in front of them is dictated by God, that hierarchy has a moral, qualitative value.” (Source)
• Asked about the message of the book, Watson responded that she wanted to portray trauma in its entirety, “what it would be like to be in the head of someone for a day non-stop, rather than just in those moments of extremity” (Source)
• Watson has cited cited Virginia Woolf’s writing as an influence on her work, particularly Between the Acts.
Reading little scratch was an adventure.
The creative typesetting in this book is a visual and experiential
! ! ! ! ! ! delight ! ! ! ! ! !
Sometimes
. . the
. . . . text
. . . . . . reads
. . . . . . . . diagonally.
At
other
times
it
reads
vertically.
We often navigate . . . . denoting what the . . . . . consuming
multiple parallel . . . . . narrator is thinking, . . . . on
columns of text . . . . . . reading and . . . . . . . . . . . screen.
A few pages in, and the text starts to feel very natural (to the point where you wonder why this format isn’t more widely used).
The story follows a day in the life of the narrator, a young woman in her 20s who works as an admin assistant in a newsroom. We get her every thought, action and movement, including detailed descriptions of morning ablutions (“plop!” (then faster) plop! plop! plop!”). Once at work, she checks her phone religiously, thinks about her boyfriend frequently and is haunted by the memories of a recent assault, which she has yet to share with others. As in Ducks, Newburyport, a portrait of trauma and anxiety eventually emerges – the text reflecting a disheveled mind, which becomes even more fractured as a result of chronic distractedness.
While the story starts off rather brilliantly, it fell flat for me in the second half. The text ultimately does not do justice to its weighty themes, nor does it achieve a satisfying balance of the profound to the banal. Much of it feels like a short story, stretched too far (incidentally, parts of the text were previously published in short story format). Another issue – perhaps related to the youth of the author – is that Watson does not fully trust her reader. It feels, at times, like a sermon on #metoo and related topics – intended for readers desperately in need of education. (I personally prefer a lighter hammer.)
Despite these niggles, I remain in awe of the innovative structure of the novel – even though it did not, in my opinion, quite reach its full potential.
Mood: Neurotic
Innovation: 10/10
Overall reading experience: 7/10
Also on Instagram.
Some interesting facts about the novel
• Parts of the novel were previously shortlisted for the White Review story prize in 2018.
•
• Asked about the message of the book, Watson responded that she wanted to portray trauma in its entirety, “what it would be like to be in the head of someone for a day non-stop, rather than just in those moments of extremity” (Source)
• Watson has cited cited Virginia Woolf’s writing as an influence on her work, particularly Between the Acts.
October 14, 2021
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2021
Another very impressive book from the very strong Goldsmiths list, this book follows a day in the life of its narrator, a young woman who works for a newspaper in what would once have been seen as a secretarial role.
The book's layout is almost poetic, as fragments of thoughts and other distractions run in parallel columns, leaving the reader to decide for themselves what order to read them in and where to switch between them (when I see books that use these techniques, I always wonder how much of the experience is lost by those who only "read" audiobooks).
The thoughts are a mixture of the prosaic, describing the sights, sounds and feelings of a working day sequentially, and deeper undercurrents which gradually come to dominate the book .
Watson also plays with the expectations of autofiction, creating an expectation that she is writing about herself and then distancing herself by adding a few hints about her own place in the story.
Another very impressive book from the very strong Goldsmiths list, this book follows a day in the life of its narrator, a young woman who works for a newspaper in what would once have been seen as a secretarial role.
The book's layout is almost poetic, as fragments of thoughts and other distractions run in parallel columns, leaving the reader to decide for themselves what order to read them in and where to switch between them (when I see books that use these techniques, I always wonder how much of the experience is lost by those who only "read" audiobooks).
The thoughts are a mixture of the prosaic, describing the sights, sounds and feelings of a working day sequentially, and deeper undercurrents which gradually come to dominate the book .
Watson also plays with the expectations of autofiction, creating an expectation that she is writing about herself and then distancing herself by adding a few hints about her own place in the story.
October 20, 2021
Authors have used innumerable methods and styles of writing to describe the physical and mental experience of everyday life in fiction, but Rebecca Watson has developed a technique which feels wholly unique. “Little Scratch” is the story of a day in the life of an unnamed young woman in London from the moment she wakes up to the moment she goes to sleep. The text is spaced across the page in a way which captures the repetition of the character's actions or how she might be thinking one thing while doing something else or how she might be surprised by a physical sensation like hot water. In this way we get a feel for the overlapping/simultaneous thoughts and sensory experiences she has throughout the day which at first appears to be an ordinary day like any other, but gradually it's revealed that she's really struggling to deal with a traumatic event. Encountering text which deviates so radically from the uniform paragraphs we're accustomed to might feel gimmicky or alienating at first, but it soon felt totally natural to me as I got into the rhythm of writing. It's also highly relatable because it captures something true about how we judder throughout our days getting lost in distractions or small obsessions or the tedium of office life or how we avoid thinking directly about things which seem insurmountably difficult. Watson creatively shows this to be both comic and tragic.
Read my full review of Little Scratch by Rebecca Watson on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Little Scratch by Rebecca Watson on LonesomeReader
September 19, 2023
reading this hurt my brain
October 14, 2021
I approached this book with high hopes and it was the final book for me of the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize shortlist. Mentally, I had already prepared a slot for it near the top of my personal rankings list (where it would have some very strong competition because I have liked several of the books on that shortlist).
Unfortunately, my reading experience didn’t live up to my high expectations. And this is a real shame because the author is doing something fresh and new (exactly what the Goldsmiths is about, so I completely get why it is on that shortlist) and is addressing important topics (e.g. sexual trauma, the impact of rape on a woman’s body and on her existing relationship, workplace sexual “power games”, #metoo).
The way the book is presented to the reader should also have been something that excited me. Indeed, I knew a bit about the format before I started and it WAS one of the things I was most interested in. It’s a kind of “stream of consciousness” that experiments with a way to try to capture all the thoughts that flow through a woman’s mind in the course of one Friday. In order to capture those thoughts, the text is set out in a variety of formats, often with several columns running in parallel down the page tracking internal thoughts and reactions to external events. And this is, I agree, sort of how our minds work - we think about something whilst at the same time reacting to what others around us are doing. And our thoughts often jump from one thing to another or return to earlier thoughts at what seems like random.
But, try as I might, I could not make the book work for me. I wonder if part of the reason for this is that I read it whilst also reading a book of poetry. The format of the book can make you think about poetry and the fact that I was reading poetry interleaved with reading this book probably meant I was putting a kind of “poetry expectation” on this novel. But this isn’t poetry and it shouldn’t be read as poetry. That said, I went back to the beginning two or three times and tried different ways to read it (I tried reading the interleaved bits still interleaved, I tried un-interleaving them and skipping up and down the page instead, I tried reading out loud instead of “out loud in my head” (there has to be an “out loud” somehow when reading this book, I think)), but I just couldn’t make it work.
Maybe it’s just that my mind works in a different way, but I didn’t find this felt like what I think my brain does. And it took several diversions where it became a more standard narrative which means it stopped being any kind of stream of consciousness and became more someone writing down what they had thought about. I think that perhaps what the author wants us to experience is just impossible to capture in words on a page however you lay them out. It always feels like a book rather than an experience of someone’s internal state.
I’m not explaining this very well, but the bottom line is that I ended the book frustrated and a bit disappointed. I think the author deserves a lot of credit for trying something new and I think the Goldsmiths has done exactly the right thing in recognising that by shortlisting the book. But my own experience of reading the book was not what I had hoped for.
Unfortunately, my reading experience didn’t live up to my high expectations. And this is a real shame because the author is doing something fresh and new (exactly what the Goldsmiths is about, so I completely get why it is on that shortlist) and is addressing important topics (e.g. sexual trauma, the impact of rape on a woman’s body and on her existing relationship, workplace sexual “power games”, #metoo).
The way the book is presented to the reader should also have been something that excited me. Indeed, I knew a bit about the format before I started and it WAS one of the things I was most interested in. It’s a kind of “stream of consciousness” that experiments with a way to try to capture all the thoughts that flow through a woman’s mind in the course of one Friday. In order to capture those thoughts, the text is set out in a variety of formats, often with several columns running in parallel down the page tracking internal thoughts and reactions to external events. And this is, I agree, sort of how our minds work - we think about something whilst at the same time reacting to what others around us are doing. And our thoughts often jump from one thing to another or return to earlier thoughts at what seems like random.
But, try as I might, I could not make the book work for me. I wonder if part of the reason for this is that I read it whilst also reading a book of poetry. The format of the book can make you think about poetry and the fact that I was reading poetry interleaved with reading this book probably meant I was putting a kind of “poetry expectation” on this novel. But this isn’t poetry and it shouldn’t be read as poetry. That said, I went back to the beginning two or three times and tried different ways to read it (I tried reading the interleaved bits still interleaved, I tried un-interleaving them and skipping up and down the page instead, I tried reading out loud instead of “out loud in my head” (there has to be an “out loud” somehow when reading this book, I think)), but I just couldn’t make it work.
Maybe it’s just that my mind works in a different way, but I didn’t find this felt like what I think my brain does. And it took several diversions where it became a more standard narrative which means it stopped being any kind of stream of consciousness and became more someone writing down what they had thought about. I think that perhaps what the author wants us to experience is just impossible to capture in words on a page however you lay them out. It always feels like a book rather than an experience of someone’s internal state.
I’m not explaining this very well, but the bottom line is that I ended the book frustrated and a bit disappointed. I think the author deserves a lot of credit for trying something new and I think the Goldsmiths has done exactly the right thing in recognising that by shortlisting the book. But my own experience of reading the book was not what I had hoped for.
October 6, 2022
Little Scratch incorporates everything I love in a novel: it plays around with the concept of a novel, at least in this case structurally, there’s a lot of energy and the plot is quite a serious one.
The book covers 24 hours in the life of an office worker., from the moment she gets up to bedtime. We see her daily routines like finding it difficult to get up to her struggles to get in the tube on time. As the book progresses we readers get little crumbs of her life: she has a long distant relationships, she does not like her boss and, more importantly she constantly feels itchy and scratches herself until she bleeds.
The thing is the problems such as getting up, the scratchiness etc all stem from the same problem and the book goes into a dark rabbit hole, where we find out that the narrator has undergone a traumatic experience.
Little Scratch is a book about abuse in the workplace and how it psychologically damages a person. This is not exactly a spoiler due to the way the book is structured: words fly across the page, there are two conversations happening simultaneously (no worries they’re easy to follow as they appear on opposite sides of the page) but it does capture the confusion the main character is going through. The toughest section to read being the last few pages when things go graphic and we really feel the narrator’s pain. Yet despite the ugliness, the prose has something oddly poetic about it, with it’s repetition and choice of phrases, with an almost rap like quality to it.
Although, due to the subject matter, I shouldn’t say I had fun reading Little Scratch, I can say though that the writing is different and fresh and manages to bring out the inner feelings of the narrator. This is a powerful book and, hopefully, could be of help for people who find themselves in the main protagonist’s situation.
The book covers 24 hours in the life of an office worker., from the moment she gets up to bedtime. We see her daily routines like finding it difficult to get up to her struggles to get in the tube on time. As the book progresses we readers get little crumbs of her life: she has a long distant relationships, she does not like her boss and, more importantly she constantly feels itchy and scratches herself until she bleeds.
The thing is the problems such as getting up, the scratchiness etc all stem from the same problem and the book goes into a dark rabbit hole, where we find out that the narrator has undergone a traumatic experience.
Little Scratch is a book about abuse in the workplace and how it psychologically damages a person. This is not exactly a spoiler due to the way the book is structured: words fly across the page, there are two conversations happening simultaneously (no worries they’re easy to follow as they appear on opposite sides of the page) but it does capture the confusion the main character is going through. The toughest section to read being the last few pages when things go graphic and we really feel the narrator’s pain. Yet despite the ugliness, the prose has something oddly poetic about it, with it’s repetition and choice of phrases, with an almost rap like quality to it.
Although, due to the subject matter, I shouldn’t say I had fun reading Little Scratch, I can say though that the writing is different and fresh and manages to bring out the inner feelings of the narrator. This is a powerful book and, hopefully, could be of help for people who find themselves in the main protagonist’s situation.
Read
March 4, 2022Brilliant. Best thing I’ve read in a while.
September 6, 2020
[advanced reader copy honest review]
from the depths of the COVID-quarantine depressed cave I crawl to speak on this book. there's a moment within the text where the narrator Googles the rate of workplace sexual harassment and, as a reader, it reminded me of how devastatingly exhausted I am by the commonplace nature of this narrative - how woefully unsurprising it is, in ways, to pick up a book written about a young woman and find assault threaded through. Simultaneously, I am vitalized by the brilliance in which this story is told. Don't come here for tidy resolutions or swells of comfort. little scratch delivers - most astoundingly through the FORM (I swoon, honestly) - the every-day stream of consciousness of a single day plucked from the life of the narrator as she steps, hour-by-blurred-hour, through her life following her assault. There is tremendous power in the forceful push for "normal" throughout, the cracks in her "togetherness" resonating in booms, without any breaks to breathe as the narrative pushes you forward. In composition - prose, poetry, who knows - the shifting structure shuttles you along by sheer momentum, without ever letting you feel your feet under you, just as the narrator hurtles forward in numb rawness.
from the depths of the COVID-quarantine depressed cave I crawl to speak on this book. there's a moment within the text where the narrator Googles the rate of workplace sexual harassment and, as a reader, it reminded me of how devastatingly exhausted I am by the commonplace nature of this narrative - how woefully unsurprising it is, in ways, to pick up a book written about a young woman and find assault threaded through. Simultaneously, I am vitalized by the brilliance in which this story is told. Don't come here for tidy resolutions or swells of comfort. little scratch delivers - most astoundingly through the FORM (I swoon, honestly) - the every-day stream of consciousness of a single day plucked from the life of the narrator as she steps, hour-by-blurred-hour, through her life following her assault. There is tremendous power in the forceful push for "normal" throughout, the cracks in her "togetherness" resonating in booms, without any breaks to breathe as the narrative pushes you forward. In composition - prose, poetry, who knows - the shifting structure shuttles you along by sheer momentum, without ever letting you feel your feet under you, just as the narrator hurtles forward in numb rawness.
July 18, 2022
I have never read a book like Little Scratch.
TW: rape/sexual assault
I listened to this on audio based off reviews and the second I started listening I knew I made the right choice. It’s short, poetic and choppy with a non-linear structure (swipe the next slide to see a picture of how the book is written).
‘Little Scratch’ tells the story of a day in the life of an unnamed 20-something year old women in London from the moment she wakes up to when she falls asleep. We are inside her head for every single action and thought she has. She is funny yet also neurotic. As the day goes on we find out she has experienced a workplace assault a few weeks back and we follow as she confronts what happened to her.
The message of the story is important but you will have to work hard and be focused to receive it and follow along. The title itself is a tongue-in-cheek description of what the character experiences. A scratch is something very minor, inconsequential and nothing life-altering. Life moves on and she’s supposed to carry on with her life as if nothing happened yet in actuality what she experiences and the trauma that follows is giant, deep and all consuming.
If I didn’t have the audiobook there is no way I would have the attention span or energy to decode the entire book.
However, I do think if you go into with an open mind and remove any current expectations of how stories are normally structured, I think you can enjoy this story. If you decide to read, best of luck.
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 rounded up
TW: rape/sexual assault
I listened to this on audio based off reviews and the second I started listening I knew I made the right choice. It’s short, poetic and choppy with a non-linear structure (swipe the next slide to see a picture of how the book is written).
‘Little Scratch’ tells the story of a day in the life of an unnamed 20-something year old women in London from the moment she wakes up to when she falls asleep. We are inside her head for every single action and thought she has. She is funny yet also neurotic. As the day goes on we find out she has experienced a workplace assault a few weeks back and we follow as she confronts what happened to her.
The message of the story is important but you will have to work hard and be focused to receive it and follow along. The title itself is a tongue-in-cheek description of what the character experiences. A scratch is something very minor, inconsequential and nothing life-altering. Life moves on and she’s supposed to carry on with her life as if nothing happened yet in actuality what she experiences and the trauma that follows is giant, deep and all consuming.
If I didn’t have the audiobook there is no way I would have the attention span or energy to decode the entire book.
However, I do think if you go into with an open mind and remove any current expectations of how stories are normally structured, I think you can enjoy this story. If you decide to read, best of luck.
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 rounded up
December 4, 2020
I love a circadian narrative and had heard interesting things about the experimental style used in this debut novel. I even heard Watson read a passage from it as part of a Faber online preview event and found it very funny and engaging. But I really should have tried an excerpt before requesting this for review; I would have seen at a glance that this wasn’t for me. I don’t have a problem with prose being formatted like poetry (Girl, Woman, Other, Stubborn Archivist, the prologue of Wendy McGrath’s Santa Rosa), but here it seemed to me that it was only done to alleviate the tedium of the contents.
A young woman who, likes Watson, works for a newspaper, trudges through a typical day: wake up, get ready, commute to the office, waste time and snack in between doing bits of work, get outraged about inconsequential things (though I share her hatred for “Mr Brightside”), think about her boyfriend (only ever referred to as “my him” – probably my biggest specific pet peeve about the book), and push down memories of a sexual assault. The only thing that really happens happened before the book even started: . Her scratching, to the point of open wounds and scabs, seems like a psychosomatic symptom of unprocessed trauma. By the end, she’s getting ready to tell her boyfriend about , which seems like a step in the right direction.
I might have found Watson’s approach captivating in a short story, or as brief passages studded in a longer narrative. At first it’s a fun puzzle to ponder how these mostly unpunctuated words, dotted around the pages in two to six columns, fit together – should one read down each column, or across each row, or both? – but when all the scattershot words are only there to describe a train carriage filling up or repetitive quotidian actions (sifting through e-mails, pedalling a bicycle), the style soon grates. You may have more patience with it than I did if you loved A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing or books by Emma Glass. I would recommend Stubborn Archivist instead, though.
A passage I liked: “got to do this thing again, the waking up thing, the day thing, the work thing, disentangling from my duvet thing, this is something, this is a thing I have to do then,” [this one appears all as one left-aligned paragraph]
A young woman who, likes Watson, works for a newspaper, trudges through a typical day: wake up, get ready, commute to the office, waste time and snack in between doing bits of work, get outraged about inconsequential things (though I share her hatred for “Mr Brightside”), think about her boyfriend (only ever referred to as “my him” – probably my biggest specific pet peeve about the book), and push down memories of a sexual assault. The only thing that really happens happened before the book even started: . Her scratching, to the point of open wounds and scabs, seems like a psychosomatic symptom of unprocessed trauma. By the end, she’s getting ready to tell her boyfriend about , which seems like a step in the right direction.
I might have found Watson’s approach captivating in a short story, or as brief passages studded in a longer narrative. At first it’s a fun puzzle to ponder how these mostly unpunctuated words, dotted around the pages in two to six columns, fit together – should one read down each column, or across each row, or both? – but when all the scattershot words are only there to describe a train carriage filling up or repetitive quotidian actions (sifting through e-mails, pedalling a bicycle), the style soon grates. You may have more patience with it than I did if you loved A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing or books by Emma Glass. I would recommend Stubborn Archivist instead, though.
A passage I liked: “got to do this thing again, the waking up thing, the day thing, the work thing, disentangling from my duvet thing, this is something, this is a thing I have to do then,” [this one appears all as one left-aligned paragraph]
July 15, 2021
I just finished little scratch, which I should have finished the same day I started it, but I found my interest starting to lag half way through. I think it was a smart, interesting style, but for me, if it had been shorter it would have been more impactful.
We spend a day in the mind of a troubled woman where her questions about office etiquette, observations of coworkers, and warm thought about “my him” are woven through with unwanted, violent images of “him.” Like most of us her thoughts are often non-linear and the page layout reflects this with uneven columns and over lapping, partial paragraphs and unfinished sentences. I don’t know if this was the best style for this story; this is about a rape, the struggle to not think about it, and the desire to continue to have a healthy sexual relationship with a loving partner, but too often the emotional component for me got lost in the effort of making sense of the page layout, although I did feel her fear when she had to interact with her boss.
While it was an interesting style, it was not completely original. Meena Kandasamy and other authors have been creative with page layouts, autofiction about troubled women is an all too common trope, and a lot of us read a book that was over 1000 pages of a woman’s non-linear inner monologue.
Still though, I liked it and would absolutely recommend it, but with the warning that there are some violent images of rape.
We spend a day in the mind of a troubled woman where her questions about office etiquette, observations of coworkers, and warm thought about “my him” are woven through with unwanted, violent images of “him.” Like most of us her thoughts are often non-linear and the page layout reflects this with uneven columns and over lapping, partial paragraphs and unfinished sentences. I don’t know if this was the best style for this story; this is about a rape, the struggle to not think about it, and the desire to continue to have a healthy sexual relationship with a loving partner, but too often the emotional component for me got lost in the effort of making sense of the page layout, although I did feel her fear when she had to interact with her boss.
While it was an interesting style, it was not completely original. Meena Kandasamy and other authors have been creative with page layouts, autofiction about troubled women is an all too common trope, and a lot of us read a book that was over 1000 pages of a woman’s non-linear inner monologue.
Still though, I liked it and would absolutely recommend it, but with the warning that there are some violent images of rape.
January 16, 2021
4.5 rounded up
The term stream of consciousness is bandied about a lot to describe books, but this is a true example of the form. Whilst reading I found myself trying think of other books to compare this to, and the only real comparisons I could come up with were Ducks, Newburyport (only ever so slightly comparable for the immersion into the protagonists train of thought) and Exquisite Cadavers (for the seldom used - in my experience - form of multiple vertical columns of text to indicate simultaneously occurring thoughts).
little scratch takes the reader into the mind of a young woman as she goes about her life; mostly at work but also when she goes on a date. The unnamed protagonist flits from thought to thought, often spiralling back to her recent rape at the hands of her boss and the self harm which has begun in response to this. Her thoughts are droll, the humour dry, and a lot of the workplace observations highly relatable (in the vein of The New Me). In spite of the heavy subject matter this makes for an accessible and propulsive novel which is hard to put down.
I found this to be a memorable, acerbic read, and one I'd recommend to others who are in search of a novel which plays with form and does not pull any punches in its depiction of sexual trauma.
Thank you Netgalley and Faber and Faber for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
The term stream of consciousness is bandied about a lot to describe books, but this is a true example of the form. Whilst reading I found myself trying think of other books to compare this to, and the only real comparisons I could come up with were Ducks, Newburyport (only ever so slightly comparable for the immersion into the protagonists train of thought) and Exquisite Cadavers (for the seldom used - in my experience - form of multiple vertical columns of text to indicate simultaneously occurring thoughts).
little scratch takes the reader into the mind of a young woman as she goes about her life; mostly at work but also when she goes on a date. The unnamed protagonist flits from thought to thought, often spiralling back to her recent rape at the hands of her boss and the self harm which has begun in response to this. Her thoughts are droll, the humour dry, and a lot of the workplace observations highly relatable (in the vein of The New Me). In spite of the heavy subject matter this makes for an accessible and propulsive novel which is hard to put down.
I found this to be a memorable, acerbic read, and one I'd recommend to others who are in search of a novel which plays with form and does not pull any punches in its depiction of sexual trauma.
Thank you Netgalley and Faber and Faber for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
February 4, 2021
I feel so connected to this book.
In Little Scratch Rebecca Watson captures the disarray of human consciousness as a woman goes through the course of a day. Despite being initially unsure about the experimental format, I didn’t find it hard work at all. My brain loved the parallel thoughts and the agency this gave me as a reader. Whilst others have disagreed, I found the protagonist’s often self-conscious inner narrative believable and relatable.
In a lot of the stream-of-consciousness style books I’ve read, especially those following characters similarly dealing with trauma and/or spiralling thoughts, I have felt a coldness and detachment that stops me fully loving the experience. Watson manages to capture wry observations and to communicate the struggles of living in the aftermath of trauma, whilst also bringing so much warmth and hope to her work.
The ordinary kindness of a distant colleague bringing a cup of tea to the protagonist’s desk when she can tell the other woman is tense, and the protagonist’s thought that, if she (a woman whose name she doesn’t even remember) can notice the change, how is it possible that her own rapist cannot see or be moved by what he has done? That ruined me.
Maybe people who don’t overthink or find themselves distracted by obsessive-compulsive thoughts may find parts of this book jarring, but I found them comforting and illuminating.
There is just so much here that I love and want to discuss further, but also to clasp to myself and ponder alone.
In Little Scratch Rebecca Watson captures the disarray of human consciousness as a woman goes through the course of a day. Despite being initially unsure about the experimental format, I didn’t find it hard work at all. My brain loved the parallel thoughts and the agency this gave me as a reader. Whilst others have disagreed, I found the protagonist’s often self-conscious inner narrative believable and relatable.
In a lot of the stream-of-consciousness style books I’ve read, especially those following characters similarly dealing with trauma and/or spiralling thoughts, I have felt a coldness and detachment that stops me fully loving the experience. Watson manages to capture wry observations and to communicate the struggles of living in the aftermath of trauma, whilst also bringing so much warmth and hope to her work.
The ordinary kindness of a distant colleague bringing a cup of tea to the protagonist’s desk when she can tell the other woman is tense, and the protagonist’s thought that, if she (a woman whose name she doesn’t even remember) can notice the change, how is it possible that her own rapist cannot see or be moved by what he has done? That ruined me.
Maybe people who don’t overthink or find themselves distracted by obsessive-compulsive thoughts may find parts of this book jarring, but I found them comforting and illuminating.
There is just so much here that I love and want to discuss further, but also to clasp to myself and ponder alone.
July 2, 2024
how did rebecca watson get into my daily brain.
I bet everyone who's ever read this physically with their eyeballs has each read it in a different way, and that's really fucking cool. absolutely a hidden gem, but can be very triggering & frustrating to read as well, but once you're accustomed to letting your eyes just do their thing with the cleverly crafted formatting, it's beautiful.
TW: rape, mental illness
I bet everyone who's ever read this physically with their eyeballs has each read it in a different way, and that's really fucking cool. absolutely a hidden gem, but can be very triggering & frustrating to read as well, but once you're accustomed to letting your eyes just do their thing with the cleverly crafted formatting, it's beautiful.
TW: rape, mental illness
January 30, 2021
look at me now lost in linearity, where is the freedom in my head, to not to only have to 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 gets pushed down eventually taking my head away, but always giving it back (or do I wrench it back? ….
This debut novel will I think be one of the most innovative I read in 2021 – and I would be not be surprised to see it featuring on both the Women’s Prize and Goldsmith Prize lists. The Goldsmith was of course won in its first year by Eimear McBride’s harrowing stream-of-consciousness novel “A Girl is a Half Formed Thing” which is the only time ever I have listened to an audiobook as a way of gaining entry to a book I had found it difficult to access in print (just for reference in a typical year I read around 150 novels and listen to 0 audiobooks) – allowing me then to read the novel.
So when I heard of this novel – with its experimental stream-of-consciousness rendering on the page of the thoughts of a woman suffering trauma, a book very much about voice and which it is impossible to read other than aloud in one’s head – I was delighted to be able to both buy the novel in print but also to source a copy of the Audiobook (narrated by the author herself) - with thanks to W.F. Howes Ltd via NetGalley.
The style of this book I should stress is very different – rather than McBride’s relentlessness assault of fragmentary sentences and inventive language, we have here intersecting, sometimes parallel, sometimes intervleaved threads of internal monologue but also What’s App exchanges, emails, trip advisor reviews, poems, railway annoucements, brief conversations – all written in everyday language, thought and speech. The look and particularly spacing of the text on the page is itself part of the effect- and very different again to McBride’s wall of text. And the voice too very different in both animation and accent (Southern English, twenty-something, well educated).
The unnamed narrator is an assistant for an unnamed international newspaper – and the story is one Friday in her life, starting with her awakening, slightly hungover, through to her drifting to post-coital sleep. Most of it takes place in her “dreaded” office – and much of the background detail will be very familiar to any London based white collar worker. There though, and what gives the book its propulsive power, the spectre of her sexist boss and a rape (which he blithely will not acknowledge and which the narrator has still not disclosed – including to her “Him” her boyfriend) hangs over her.
The form follows both from the book’s set up and from trying to capture the multi-tasking digital world in which we now exist, the author said in an FT article she authored on the art of fiction in the age of social media “When I started writing my own novel, incorporating this digital compulsion was one of the first issues I ran into. I was writing a book that aimed to follow the mind of a woman in her twenties, nonstop, so ignoring it would be a plot hole. But quickly, I found that it opened up my protagonist, created a portal to others while still keeping her isolated. It inspired me to shake up form; the pressures of an age of distraction making me break up prose into columns and fragments.”
The story originally started life as a prize shortlisted short story – and that story forms the midpoint of the day and is reproduced in full in the novel and gives a good sense of the book – much better than I think I have or can manage.
https://www.thewhitereview.org/fictio...
There are some clever touches in the book.
Even as I wrote the review it was tempting to refer to elements of the plot that fit closely what I understand of the author’s life and experiences – and the one time when the book diverts to a WhatsApp group chat (otherwise the narrator leaves them unread, instead just communicating with her Mum and her Him) it is for a brief discussion on female auto-fiction.
Cleverly then there is a benign colleague in the book – who checks in on the narrator occasionally, especially when she senses she is particularly distressed – and this colleague is effectively, in many senses, the author.
The text (as my opening and closing quotes show) brings in ideas of linearity in thought and conventionality in writing (for example when the narrator finds some notes discarded by a colleague in the women’s toilet bin).
Overall I thought this was an excellent book treating an important if difficult subject –#MeToo and sexual assault in the workplace.
The author herself, announcing the upcoming audiobook, tweeted recently something which very much captured my different experiences with the novel and the audiobook “It was a strange thing to record as the text is so much about encouraging the reader to make decisions and learn patterns. Instead, it becomes a performance, but it still demands attention and, I think, works. I always heard it in a voice!”. If there is a difficulty in accessing the text it is in deciding how to read when there are two different sections interleaved – do you read each in series or attempt them in parallel (or – which I think is the most appropriate – pick according to context). The audiobook – while still retaining the idea of interleaving threads – makes this choice for you, which both brings you closer to the author’s own choices (and narrator’s true voice) but also I think removes some of the reader’s agency.
So my recommendation – buy them both.
I know (even whilst thinking) that my writing would make more sense
diary entries that is – notes on experiences or feelings or whatever, not
because my head
is stable or makes particular sense as if but
when I write a diary (when I did) or notes (which has not been for a long time yes great I know) (no not since, nothing since) but when I did, 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, context handily supplied ……….
… that’s why she is so terrifying no unsettling toilet bin note
woman
… it’s all just nonsense, whirring, not connection and toilet woman
thinks that’s fine ? is too obsessed or whatever to want to compose something
composed
November 22, 2019
Mama Mia! This isa the besta book I've evera read!
May 24, 2022
I saw Rebecca Watson at Charleston, Sussex (20.05.2022) in conversation with Lucy Kirkwood (author of Maryland), moderated by Katie Mitchell.
What came across strongly about Watson’s book specifically, is that half of every discussion is focused on the layout, and form of the writing, and the second part focuses on the content. This is true of most on line interviews too.
The Form of Little Scratch
This is not the first novel I’ve read whose textual layout is the most immediate talking point. Mark Danielewski’s and The Familiar, and HAPPY by Nicola Barker are some examples of letters, symbols and punctuation flying all over the page.
I did like the use of side by side columns in Little Scratch, not least to differentiate and match up two sides of a conversation.
In interviews Rebecca Watson talks about the inspiration of Virginia Woolf, and because Little Scratch is a full on stream of consciousness from start to finish, the disjointed layout works well.
The content in Little Scratch
The most original idea I took from the book is that it’s OK for a victim of rape to think in terms that are highly sexual, and passionate. Watson’s language of sex is graphic, assertive and quite a contrast to stories in which rape happens and the victim is left traumatised at the thought of future sex.
The best way to summarise the effects of this hard hitting subject is to pick out the emphases which Watson elaborated on in her Charleston talk
• A few men said they had changed as a consequence of reading the book; but it is mostly women who identified with the message and thanked her.
• Some angry men have also been in touch. A typical response is anger at the passage when the narrator says:
“If a man says a certain sort of man that is says nice shoes he is not saying nice shoes he is saying I am itemising you” (54)
Why can’t I praise a woman’s shoes, is the strident reaction. This clearly misses the point that not every man is being creepy, but it is important (should be obvious) that all men start to recognise this type of male gaze even if they are not personally culpable.
• In interviews it’s like a dance as Watson frequently felt she was being pushed to say that the story was autobiographical. Its not. Some interviews were really uncomfortable as a consequence.
• The authorial figure in the book is actually telegraphed for those that read it properly. She is “R” (naturally!)
o “name beginning with an R, likely Rachel although that doesn’t sound right” (52)
o “her name beginning with R… think she’s some sort of altruist” (122).
• On her influences, Watson cited Sarah Kane (playwright); Virginia Woolf; especially Between the Acts ; Eimear McBride; Meena Kandasamy—the link is ‘performative voices’
Would I recommend this book? It is certainly a book that benefits from both a speedy read and almost cursory attention to detail (so to absorb the layout and form), and also a second, closer reading of the content. I thought Rebecca Watson’s reading on stage was superb, and I can appreciate why this was successfully performed at the Hampstead Theatre in 2021.
What came across strongly about Watson’s book specifically, is that half of every discussion is focused on the layout, and form of the writing, and the second part focuses on the content. This is true of most on line interviews too.
The Form of Little Scratch
This is not the first novel I’ve read whose textual layout is the most immediate talking point. Mark Danielewski’s and The Familiar, and HAPPY by Nicola Barker are some examples of letters, symbols and punctuation flying all over the page.
I did like the use of side by side columns in Little Scratch, not least to differentiate and match up two sides of a conversation.
In interviews Rebecca Watson talks about the inspiration of Virginia Woolf, and because Little Scratch is a full on stream of consciousness from start to finish, the disjointed layout works well.
The content in Little Scratch
The most original idea I took from the book is that it’s OK for a victim of rape to think in terms that are highly sexual, and passionate. Watson’s language of sex is graphic, assertive and quite a contrast to stories in which rape happens and the victim is left traumatised at the thought of future sex.
The best way to summarise the effects of this hard hitting subject is to pick out the emphases which Watson elaborated on in her Charleston talk
• A few men said they had changed as a consequence of reading the book; but it is mostly women who identified with the message and thanked her.
• Some angry men have also been in touch. A typical response is anger at the passage when the narrator says:
“If a man says a certain sort of man that is says nice shoes he is not saying nice shoes he is saying I am itemising you” (54)
Why can’t I praise a woman’s shoes, is the strident reaction. This clearly misses the point that not every man is being creepy, but it is important (should be obvious) that all men start to recognise this type of male gaze even if they are not personally culpable.
• In interviews it’s like a dance as Watson frequently felt she was being pushed to say that the story was autobiographical. Its not. Some interviews were really uncomfortable as a consequence.
• The authorial figure in the book is actually telegraphed for those that read it properly. She is “R” (naturally!)
o “name beginning with an R, likely Rachel although that doesn’t sound right” (52)
o “her name beginning with R… think she’s some sort of altruist” (122).
• On her influences, Watson cited Sarah Kane (playwright); Virginia Woolf; especially Between the Acts ; Eimear McBride; Meena Kandasamy—the link is ‘performative voices’
Would I recommend this book? It is certainly a book that benefits from both a speedy read and almost cursory attention to detail (so to absorb the layout and form), and also a second, closer reading of the content. I thought Rebecca Watson’s reading on stage was superb, and I can appreciate why this was successfully performed at the Hampstead Theatre in 2021.
August 7, 2022
ta książka daje o wiele więcej niż obiecuje opis i niż się spodziewałam. na te dwie godziny lektury na wchodzimy w umysł kobiety, która przez cały dzień zmaga się z traumą, anxiety i ciągłą gonitwą myśli. cztery gwiazdki daje głównie za formę, bo tak jak tematyka nie jest odkrywcza tak sposób napisania tej książki ją odświeża i przedstawia nową perspektywę. smutna i poruszająca, ale polecam sprawdzić (albo spytać mnie o) trigger warnings przed czytaniem.
January 26, 2021
I expected this to be a difficult read. The style reminded me of Kandasamy’s Exquisite Cadavers, which I hadn’t much liked. But even though the style may be more or less similar, luckily I liked Little Scratch far better. Its fragmented structure works very well here, it’ just the way the mind works really. And once you get into the flow of the story, there’s no stopping really, making it a fast, intriguing and extraordinary read.
February 2, 2023
I was blown away by how much I enjoyed this experimentally written style of the aftermath of a rape, extremely well done I can only thank the author ✨
Read
October 24, 2024I’m withholding my rating until a reread.
September 6, 2020
The risks the author took in terms of writing this are very clear - it's a courageous book in form, style, and theme. In many ways, it is DARING you to find it self-indulgent, which is an interesting position to put the reader in (and one that some readers won't be able to handle). Dare to take me seriously, the book is saying (at least to me). Often enough, young women are not taken seriously, are not listened to. It is for this reason the book left an impression on me, and that deserves credit and acknowledgement. It made me think of this David Graeber quote: "If we really want to understand the moral grounds of economic life, and, by extension, human life, it seems to me that we must start instead with the very small things." I would be interested in seeing what the author writes next.
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 526 reviews