Little Scratch

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T he staging finds its own careful balance of airy exuberance and intense anger, and it carries the same lingering power.' 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 , as the reasons for the narrator's unease around her book are clarified. 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 ………. 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. Rebecca Watson is one of The Observer’s 10 best debut novelists of 2021 and was shortlisted for this year's Desmond Elliott Prize.

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. 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.

April 2015

Overall I thought this was an excellent book treating an important if difficult subject –#MeToo and sexual assault in the workplace. My book, I should make clear now, is a novel. little scratch is a fictional day-in-the-life of a young woman (who, yes, has a boyfriend). Told in the first person, the narrator lives in London and works as an assistant full-time in a newspaper office. The reader inhabits her mind as she goes about her day, getting up, going to work, and cycling to the pub – all while attempting to surmount a trauma that she has yet to fully confront. I would look in the mirror (a different sort: toothpaste-marked, pink cup by tap) and hear rising voices Scratching as a bodily reaction to her environment, and a not very healthy relationship with food, are signals that far from all is well, and her assistant job at a newspaper features and 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 feel a part of her rambling, ever active mind. I stopped playing football at secondary school. My interest in football dimmed; there was no space for it. Boys played football in PE; lunch breaks were for talking and messing. So why have I held on to the memory? I suspect it was an interest unresolved. Now, the delight of football is also my place in it. I am returning to a world that no longer has an entry fee. I can still feel like a fraud when I’m asked who I support. I imagine how a Forest fan might feel reading this, having experienced the highs and mainly lows for years, who knows the City Ground as well as their childhood bedroom. There is something territorial about football – partly because when you feel this strongly, it can cheapen the feeling to be reminded that anyone can claim the same. Our players, our manager, the game: it occupies a significant part of the imagination. Sometimes, I yearn for a team that’s been with me my whole life. I don’t want to give up Forest or Watford, what I yearn for is something verifiable. I want my love of football to sound legitimate. But I don’t need that. Not really. I have the joy of the game, and I have what it teaches me.

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. 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. 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. 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) legs moving like a soldier, in front of mirror, face seems calm, can’t tell the heat under my tights, me, completely separate from my body, but still in it

October 2013

I’ve had some really moving responses from readers who have experienced sexual assault or rape, thanking me for representing how they feel or what they went through, or a process that they found difficult to verbalise or hadn’t seen written before. I’ve also had responses from male readers saying it made them think about their own past behaviour. Both sides of that are pretty powerful and it makes me feel very proud, but it’s a strange thing to get those reactions. A rhythmic and psychological audio experience in which Mitchell plays with artistic control' WhatsOnStage

I read Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan over Christmas. It’s really moving. The way he captures the romance of friendship is quite a rare thing. It’s also a beautiful celebration of spontaneous life, which feels really brutal to read during a pandemic. 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. 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. 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:little scratch is a little miracle… impossible to read it and not wish there were more books like it.’ Alan Trotter Miriam Battye makes her Hampstead debut. Recent credits include Scenes With Girls at the Royal Court, Big Small Lost Found Things at Bristol Old Vic and All Your Gold at Theatre Royal Plymouth. If I didn’t have the audiobook there is no way I would have the attention span or energy to decode the entire book. which is why I’m ladling (eyebrows peaking, just a little, at how the soup matches the sides of the takeaway container) T he story works on several levels and, within a minute, can draw both wry humour and gnawing horror from office life, and find weary familiarity and startling surprise in everyday routines.'

What is striking about Little Scratch is Watson’s ability to connect her character’s inner monologue with her physical existence; she is never less than fully embodied. Her mental meanderings and digressions never feel like abstract exercises in portraying thoughts or testing language. Moments of self-harm or appalled recognition of the trauma that the narrator is living through are refracted through the commonplace experiences of drinking water or walking up a flight of stairs; Watson neatly sketches the alienation from one’s environment that carries over into the body, occasionally making her appear to us like a figure in a game, navigating space, avoiding pitfalls, getting through to the next level. 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. 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. I will keep walking, I decide, walking, and just go out the other door as if this was only ever an intended throughway but ah ahh free 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.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’ Words are sent rippling up and down the line of actors, overlapping, chiming or bringing chilled silence.'