Book review: Slags
Catches the eye, doesn't it?
It certainly caught my eye in Stansted Airport’s bookshop.
It was the final book buying stop on my recent UK trip, and I was looking for something to complete my second “buy one, get one half price” purchase. I’d already decided that it needed to be fiction and, gazing around, my eyes alighted on this arrestingly titled and brightly coloured paperback.
What’s your book buying approach? Mine goes like this:
Books I’ve been recommended by friends or of which I’ve read positive reviews
Books by authors I’ve previously read and enjoyed
Books with covers and titles that catch my eye, then which close the deal through the precis on the back cover along with the review excerpts
Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth was in category no. 3. It sounded like it’d be a bit of a riot. It was, but a fair bit more besides.
The story features two sisters, Sarah and Juliette, as they head off on a road trip to Scotland to celebrate Juliette’s birthday. They’re incredibly close, but lead very different lives. Sarah is single, and lives a hedonistic life in London. Juliette is married, with two children, and seemingly settled in the north of England.
Initially, Sarah seems the bolder of the two. As the story reveals, however, (and as many of us know) appearances can be deceiving.
I don’t want to reveal too much about the plot, but the book is essentially set at two different times of the sisters’ lives. There’s the current day, with the road trip, and there’s a period of time when the sisters were teenagers, Sarah finishing her GSCEs and Juliette a couple of years younger. In many ways it’s a tale of how our younger lives can be defining throughout the rest of our years (but also, probably shouldn’t always be).
Slags is outrageously funny in places, incredibly touching in others, and shocking in parts. The descriptions of the Scottish countryside and weather are wonderfully evocative. Though I obviously can’t draw on any experience of being or having a sister - and sisterhood is clearly a central theme of the book - the representation of sibling relationships as incredibly complex but ultimately loving rings true to me.
I enjoyed some of the detail. For instance, while it wasn’t necessary, I personally liked that Unsworth highlighted that the campervan the sisters were road tripping in was a Hymer. Not because I’m a fan of campervans, particularly. In fact, I’ve been know to get quite frustrated stuck behind them on the small mountain roads where I live, as they descend on the region like a swarm of slightly off-white moulded plastic beetles every summer.
But, sitting behind them, Hymer seems to be the manufacturer I notice more than others. They’re almost always occupied by an elderly couple who look like they’ve spent too much time in close proximity and can’t wait to park up and head in different directions.
Like I say, I was pleased that Unsworth added this detail, if only because I now know what I’ll be shouting whenever I see one.
It’s difficult to pinpoint what conclusions I drew from Slags. Life can be messy, relationships complicated, families a bit fucked up. At times we unravel, and then we ravel again, sometimes bruised, and carry on (is ravel the opposite of unravel?).
I can certainly appreciate that, for women particularly, some of the situations navigated in younger life can stay with them forever.
Perhaps there doesn’t need to be a definitive conclusion? After all, there isn’t really an ending to the story (well, there sort of is, in one sense at least, but you’ll need to read it).
Maybe that’s just life, right? Few of us get to tie things up neatly. We just carry on, until we don’t (just to be clear, that’s not a spoiler. Both sisters survive to the end of the book. I guess that is a spoiler, but not much of one).
I’d give Slags an 8 out of 10. And that’s not something I say everyday. Or ever.