This book is a masterpiece. Truly original and ground-breaking, it has funny moments, times where the main character's thoughts are completely relatable, and times when they break your heart. Written as a stream-of-consciousness account of one day, the layout is difficult to grasp at first, but once you understand its anti-linearity, it rewards you with the most accurate account I've ever read of being inside your own mind.
This is the kind of book I would read over and over again and never get tired as I would keep finding new bits that I missed, and see new angles to the inner struggles and turmoils of the main character. Her own desire to talk about her struggles but inability to do so, and her difficulty with harming herself and trying to think of herself more kindly were so poignantly and intimately displayed that you feel as if the author is writing your own experiences. This is really the most rewarding, innovative book I have read in a long time.

Little Scratch follows the unnamed narrator through a single, ordinary workday. Nothing unusual happens. She wakes slightly hungover, commutes to work, watches the clock; she looks forward to soup at lunch, and has awkward conversations with co-workers. She meets her boyfriend after work, and they go to the pub and then home. Nothing extraordinary happens, yet Watson packs into this short book all the careening, inter-connected thoughts that make up a person's consciousness.

The text is aligned to show multiple layers of thought, often in two columns, so it can take a while to get used to. It reads quickly, like the thoughts tumbling frantically through the narrator’s mind, you are forced to read layers of thought or conversation simultaneously or one after another as they form distinct threads or intertwine.

At the centre of the book is the thing the narrator is not thinking about. The thing that happened to her. (Was done to her). The thing she cannot bring herself to tell anyone about. The thing she is reminded of, constantly, as otherwise innocuous observations or events suddenly drag up memory, anxiety, panic, and numbness.

Little Scratch is brilliant. I could not recommend it enough.

Unfortunately I could not read this book because of the fact that the format on kindle was not readable.

It may it so difficult to follow and in the end I gave up.

Published earlier this month, Little Scratch by Rebecca Watson has been universally praised. In this debut novel we follow a day in the life of a young woman who works in a mundane office job. We’re in her head from the moment she wakes up, to the moment she drops off to sleep.

She’s extremely self-conscious, suffering ever-present anxiety and impulses to self-harm, troubled by a recent trauma. The memories often break through, but of course she hasn’t the time (or possibly the inclination) to fully process the experience. She is assaulted by constant distractions – email, WhatsApp, Twitter and colleagues making small talk, but those intrusive, traumatic thoughts are always there under the surface.

Watson breaks the mould of standard literary form in a few ways here – firstly it’s a stream of consciousness, but this inner monologue is presented in an entirely unique way, with words scattered across the page as different thought processes happen simultaneously and overlap. On some pages there are two (or even three) columns – reading each column makes sense in its own right, but to understand the whole you must cross-reference the columns with each other. It’s certainly not an easy read, but the form successfully reflects the fragmented state of a traumatised mind. I was gripped from the start and raced through the book within an afternoon.

I could empathise with the main character as her experiences mirrored my own in many ways, and I’m sure many young office workers in big cities will feel the same. Frantically getting ready for work with a hangover, battling the morning commute on a packed train, facing the constant scrutiny of an open plan office, dealing with office predators and intrusive bosses, the constant stream of emails, finding brief moments of solace in supportive WhatsApp messages, gulping down bland, hot soup for lunch. Going out for drinks, then doing it all again the next day.

For this woman, the office is a place of fear and hostility that must be endured. She experiences very little positive human interaction during the day, aside from a few encouraging but superficial comments from other women – ‘nice shoes,’ ‘I like your dress’ etc. In a recent article for the FT, where Watson is now Assistant Arts Editor, she admits the novel would be very different if it was set today when many of us are working from home. The traumatic event at the centre of the novel is itself a product of such a toxic office environment.

When we all return to the office, will those old ways and power structures continue on as before?

Let’s hope not..

Did Not Read / Did Not Finish
Unfortunately was unable to read this book as the EPUB format provided for the Kindle was not legible. The double page spread of the book was spread out across a single page, meaning that the words were too small to comfortably read. Zooming in was not possible, so reading the book was not possible.
Unable to review N/A

I found this an astonishing read. The rhythm and the care taken to build this heartbreaking and (yes, still) beautiful book - so much else there within those short pages. Appreciate that it is absolutely not going to be for everyone, but give its pace and styling a chance to light and the fire will catch. Wonderful.

This book is something else.
At times chaotic and at others quiet poetic this truly is a stand out piece of writing.

I note that most people have referred to Little Scratch as a “stream of consciousness” but for me it comes across as more of a dialogue between the conscious mind of our character and her subconscious brain. At times it even reads like the conscious and subconscious we’re battling it out to see which one would get to have their say.

I’d honestly go as far to shelve this one under poetry-albeit not the same poetry of Wordsworth, Keats and Byron et al, but the poetry of a generation that have never lived in peaceful times-those who watched people die live on TV before they hit their teenage years, and who are battling their own minds more openly than any generation before them.

This book is experimental, and confusing, and relatable and clever and I can’t recommend it enough.

I like the idea of this book but the formatting is all over the place. You really have to work to read this one. Parts are very long winded, a page of the same word written over and over again, it takes a long time to actually get anywhere. I get what the author is trying to do but for me it wasn’t an enjoyable read.

Thank you to Fabre and Fabre for this advance copy.

Little Scratch is a day in the mind of our unnamed protagonist as she wakes, goes to work, then meets her boyfriend at a poetry reading afterwards. But in a real insight into her mind, this novel is written as a stream of consciousness, detailing every thought and tangent as she experiences them. It exposes the mundanities of her day job and the trauma, anxiety, and self harm she goes through as she exists in the same building as her boss who raped her, and the conflicting messages in her mind as she tries to process how to go on.

I have absolutely no idea where to begin writing this review.

Let's start with the format, shall we? I hated it. It was actually painful trying to get through this, it was that difficult. This book was one long sentence, all 200 pages of it, and that made it incredibly difficult to first find a good place to stop reading and put it down but also to pick it back up and find a good place to slip back into it. Yes there may be commas as some of the only punctuation in there, and line breaks, but this means nothing when the sentences keep going. Also, there are times the writing breaks off and enters two columns down the page - sometimes these columns are to be read separately, sometimes you read it like normal, straight across both columns then down to the next line, but which one was it? You'd come to a new page and not know where the fuck to carry on reading.

And I KNOW that by doing this, Watson was trying to show the characters train of thought, and the multitasking and the tangents that we go off on, but it doesn't work as a book. It doesn't work as a piece of literature because it was impossible to follow. Not only that but half of didn't make sense. Was this because I wasn't reading the words in the way that I've been taught to read the whole of the rest of my life? Was this because I was trying to read two separate sentences which had just been thrown up in the air and all chucked together? Who knows, but for most of this interal monologue I was lost.

And if it hadn't been an ARC, if it hadn't been so sort, and if it wasn't somewhat quick to get through, I definitely would have put this down and not finished it. There was no joy in reading it because it was like being set an impossible task. And there was no pay off at the end once I'd finished, not even with the content of the story where I could go 'I totally understand why it had to be written like this so I could understand this character.' No. Nothing like that. I HATED the fact this book was written this way, and I was so annoyed at that fact that that is clouding my judgement of how the author dealt with this character's experiences and thoughts, because I had to work so much to figure out what they were.

So, the content of this story. Boring, mostly. Monotonous. I'm pretty sure our character carried out one task in her whole work day, went for lunch, scratched her legs, hated her boss. Which, yes I know I'm being blase there at her self harm and encountering her rapist, but that stuff wans't brought up until well into the actual book. So for the most part it was pretty boring.

The character's reactions and her response to her boss who has raped her were actually pretty well dealt with. There is conflict in her mind, should she report him? She knows most of those reports go unactioned. She knows men get away with it. She knows she might not be believed. She knows the statistics. She knows it might ruin things with her boyfriend (who, by the way, is referred to as 'my him' throughout and is so annoying and grating). The fact that she deals with all this by scratching her legs is accurate, a coping mechanism seen after a lot of trauma.

And I get that, and I appreciate that in this book. I just hated the way it was written. And I can't get past that, I can't enjoy any aspect of this book because it was a pain in the arse to actually understand it. I think maybe it would have come across better in audiobook format? If there was someone else interpreting the formatting and sentence structure of this book so I could focus on the character and the content. But I'm still not sure I would be a massive fan of it.

Hopefully this book does appeal to some people - I imagine a lot of it's target audience would find the way it is written so refreshing and honest, but unfortunately I am not one of them. I've held off for a couple days after release day to publish this, but it just was not for me in any way.

Little Scratch tells the story of a day in the life of an unnamed woman, told in an experimental way. This is usually my type of book but unfortunately the format doesn't quite translate across into the ebook format with the font being too small (making it larger makes it blurry) and the format doesn't fit the page so I had to give up.

I am going to look out for this book in physical form as I am interested in this novel.

Take your typical day, and write down every single thought, feeling and converstation as it happens. That's little scratch. A short, stream of consciousness novel, focusing on one day in an unamed womans life. Totally different to anything I've ever read before, reading like modern poetry, Rebecca Watson experimental debut novel explores several difficult themes including office politics, anxiety, self-harm, sexual violence, rape and harrassment at work.

I found this so immersive and true to life. So much of the narrator was relatable, blunt, sarcastic with a dry sense of humour but also how she describes her anxiety being all encompassing and the feeling of being over powered by it wholy converying the effects of trauma.

This definitely isn't a book for everyone, but I'm interested in seeing what Watson's future novels look like & I really want to listen to the audio book now based on other interesting reviews!

I am normally all for experimental writing but, on this occasion, I couldn't get into it; a case of 'it's not the book it's me.'
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for review.

'Little Scratch' is one of the hardest books I've read in long time. It takes every single emotion you have (and some I didn't know I had) and sets them all alight. Empathy, anger, sadness... But also genuine hope and a sense of pride for the way people can put one foot in front of the other and still function after horrific experiences.

Human beings are resilient, but not invincible. Watson cleverly and sensitively shows that daily routines and the mundane repetitive tasks can be a form of shelter I never expected.

Trigger warning to anyone that has experienced any sort of sexual violence, but I can promise it will be worth the read.

This is an extraordinary novel - relatively slight but demanding the reader’s attention due to the unusual format and the stream of consciousness narration. Little Scratch documents every single thought in one day of the life of the unnamed narrator, a young woman who has recently suffered a sexual assault in the workplace and is trying to ignore the intrusive thoughts she’s having about it. As well as a moving and in-depth exploration of the trauma the protagonist has experienced, this is also a great novel about being young, rushing for the tube with a hangover, dealing with housemates you don’t get along with and dates on a Friday night, as well as a study of the workplace familiar to anyone who has clock-watched when they’d rather be anywhere other than their desk. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC, highly recommended.

This was a really interesting experimental work with the text forming different shapes on each page, and requiring great concentration to focus on the different threads of the narrative. I'm not sure it completely worked for me but I did feel pulled along by the writing and a real sense of urgency in the relating of the story and the emotions it engendered in the woman.
Thank you to netgalley and Faber and Faber for an advance copy of this book.

Little Scratch was an interesting, thought-provoking and innovative debut novel. The style is extremely experimental, which may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I really enjoyed it. I think I may have missed out slightly re. formatting, because the document sent was a Microsoft Word Document, and so the view on my Kindle changed/glitched occasionally. I definitely think it is a book to be read in its physical form. It’s an insightful account of one day in the life of a woman who has just suffered sexual assault. You glean information over the course of the day, and she goes into the minutiae of everyday life - which sounds boring, but I found both fascinating and comforting. Although I haven’t suffered from as severe a sexual assault as rape, I have a certain amount of first-hand experience of sexual trauma/PTSD, and found that the protagonist’s experience somewhat reflected my own, and some elements of her personal life. I would definitely both purchase this and keep an eye out for anything Watson does next.

This book is really original and I admire the author for attempting something so ambitious while tackling a really emotive topic.

Sadly I found the format too distracting and difficult to decipher to be able to fully invest in what was going on.

I’d be interested to listen to the audio of this to see how the experience differs.

Many thanks for gifting me this copy to review.

An experimental novel that initially I found difficult until I’d come to terms with the authors method of conveying, in writing, a distressed and confused mind.
A stream of consciousness novel that is both enthralling and challenging. It details a day in the life of a woman trying to cope with a traumatic event. To convey the confused mind words are muddled, repeated and sometimes spread across the page like confetti.
She carries on with normal day to day matters, trying to cope, while all the time going over what happened and there’s the constant scratching at the skin, the self harm, perhaps trying to remove all traces of the incident.
The book is complex and intense so find yourself a quiet place and put up a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign.

A very clever book that uses an experimental mismatched stream of consciousness narrative to process the difficult theme of sexual assault.

This book was really different. It was thought provoking and well thought out. I feel the book was best read in one sitting due to the nature of the style. The themes were hard hitting, and the idea as a whole was unique, making for a very interesting read from a novelist that clearly has great deal of potential. I look forward to seeing what she writes next.

Thank you Net Galley, the writer and publisher for the advance copy.

Little Scratch is an insight into the thoughts that run through our main protagonist’s head through the course of one day after she has experienced sexual trauma. Because they are her thoughts, we read a stream of consciousness. Sometimes repetitive & sometimes distracting which made sense as she was trying to suppress what had happened to her. But, the format of the book is confusing, it’s messy and the structure is hard to read as there were multiple thoughts running at the same time and they read from left to right and up and down. I was getting really frustrated so I did what I never do and went to Goodreads to see what other people thought. Someone recommended reading it quickly. Our thoughts tend to come at a mile a minute so maybe this book needs to be read fast too. Our character was suffering from trauma so it made sense for her thoughts to be rapid and all over the place.

Reading quickly helped...a little.

But not enough.

I appreciate and recognise the risk that the author took in setting the book up like this and I think it’s a great idea but as someone who can’t multitask and is generally quite a slow thinker, it was way too much work for such little pay off. I would, however, listen to this on audio as I imagine the frantic thoughts would come across well if they were heard.