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 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. 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. Miriam Battye and Katie Mitchell have turned 24 hours inside a frenzied mind into something like a piece of music' T he staging finds its own careful balance of airy exuberance and intense anger, and it carries the same lingering power.'

Rebecca Watson’s novel works magnificently on stage. Miriam Battye and Katie Mitchell have turned 24 hours inside a frenzied mind into something like a piece of music’ Evening Standard Some angry men have also been in touch. A typical response is anger at the passage when the narrator says: 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. Recently, commenting on young England star Lauren James’s performance in a match, footballer Gemma Davison described it as “like going to the theatre”. So the comparisons continue. When football is played gorgeously, when our players do something inspired, we reach for the beyond to capture what we have just experienced, to assert that we have witnessed something more than just the simple formula in front of us. When we say football is like theatre, really, we are saying that there is something disguised within the game; something beyond itself. We are describing a live-ness: not the fact of being alive, but the thrill that sometimes being alive is unbelievable. 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

Forest manager Steve Cooper, whose ‘disposition goes against the red-card-manner of managers such as Jürgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola’. Photograph: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images Experimentation aside – and it is not to everyone’s taste – Little Scratch is an extremely perceptive depiction of power and agency: in the modern workplace, where age-old and patriarchal hierarchies persist; in the modern world, where communication is truncated even when we have too much to say; and in the modern novel, where a character must find a way to name her own experience, even if only to herself. Forest playing Everton at the City Ground in Nottingham, 5 March 2023. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images

The cast features Morónkẹ́ Akinọlá ( The Niceties, Finborough Theatre), Eleanor Henderson ( Pass It On, Lyric Hammersmith), Eve Ponsonby ( Longing, Hampstead) and Ragevan Vasan ( Name, Place, Animal, Thing, Almeida). Bias is too adhesive for denial to do much. But the assumption and the expectation can be unpleasant. During one live radio interview, it increasingly became clear that the presenter wanted me to say that the protagonist’s trauma was my own. They would ask a question and not get the response they wanted, only to try another way.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.

down into the corridor (averting my eyes, upwards, away from the red and orange concentric circles across the carpet), upper arm preparing to negotiate the swing doors, nudging myself and the soup carefully slowly slowly through 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. 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. It’s a reaction against the often really messy way we talk about rape and sex. I wanted my protagonist to be able to differentiate them; separating the two is part of her ambition right across the day [over which the book unfolds]. I didn’t want rape to corrupt her sex life or sense of desire. It was an empowering position for her to take, and for me to take, to ensure that joy and desire remain, even though there’s not necessarily any resolution in the novel. ‘It’s a reaction against the messy way we talk about rape and sex’ Mitchell’s usual sound designer Melanie Wilson is on hand to add atmospheric flourishes, notably an injection of ambient dread at the right moments and a few swish surround sound effects.'whilst in the toilet I tear) face unmoved, (frantically collecting skin under my nails), teeth tight, chin set against my tongue Rebecca Watson is one of The Observer’s 10 best debut novelists of 2021 and was shortlisted for this year's Desmond Elliott Prize. 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.

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. 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) 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.no sound,) (no big drama in its departure) as a new thought takes its place, the previous clotted, trudging off, breaking its own fall, sifting down the sink, younger self Besides hilarious passages right from ordinary live we also get to see how whatsapp forms the main platform for the main character to fret over her relationship with her Him. This version of the day-in-a-life book, directed by Katie Mitchell, achieves the same lingering power using a quartet of actors' I have to stop myself, I know I will stop myself so my body scratches faster, gets in more moves in less time, if you’re going to make me tear away so soon I better get my pound’s On her influences, Watson cited Sarah Kane (playwright); Virginia Woolf; especially Between the Acts ; Eimear McBride; Meena Kandasamy—the link is ‘performative voices’