by Phoebe Stuckes
Paperback, £9.99
It can be nerve-wracking when a well-remembered former colleague writes a book. Will we be in it? Will it be good?
Declaration of interest: Phoebe Stuckes is that colleague, our former bookseller extraordinaire. And having been wowed by Phoebe’s poems in Platinum Blonde, I knew that her novel would be good. Spoiler alert: we are not in it (at least, I don’t think we are).
Dead Animals is a hypnotic novella of revenge. Waking up with injuries after a party, a young woman tries to find out what happened during the time she can’t remember. As she pieces things together, violence emerges. “You don’t know what to do, so you take out your phone and take pictures, you will think about this later, you decide, you will think about this later, maybe never, maybe you will never think about this again.”
Helene comes into her life, a stranger who might change it all, and who may know what happened.
It manages to be both eerie and deeply rooted in things that some readers might find very familiar. It nails the experience of low-paid and insecure work in hospitality, and the effect of this on the mind and body. Some of the dead animals are presented to our narrator by co-workers in the food business, although she does not eat meat. It is a novel of precarious work, among so much else. The inequalities we now accept as normal come into sharp focus.
Nicola, our manager, adds: “A thrilling, dark and sexy page-turning debut by poet (and former bookseller) Phoebe Stuckes. Brilliant!” We both found it a completely convincing exploration of anxiety too.
As you’d expect from a poet (and from someone who wrote this hilarious and skewering essay) the sentences are perfect.
I found it tense and page turning. This was admittedly heightened by me being stuck in a tunnel on a Northern line train alone, late at night, while reading the first half. It is a queer mystery, a thing there should be much more of. It is electric from page one, and livid throughout. Outstanding.
(Review by Bethan)