Little Scratch

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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.

Director Katie Mitchell brilliantly rises to the challenge of adapting Rebecca Watson’s innovative debut novel for the stage' not a clear head but a blank head, making me question my capacity to think at all (even though I know that questioning my capacity to think is thinking in itself but a different sort and not a sort I’m interested in much) I know I was reading a book on the train this morning, in fact I finished it a few minutes before we pulled into Liverpool Street and yet here I am, searching desperately for any hint of a book I might’ve encountered This is not just a clear-eyed examination of the outrage of rape and its corrosive aftermath; it is an experiential testament to what it is to move through the male-dominated world as a woman. It’s extraordinary – and indispensable.'

February 2012

The message of the story is important but you will have to work hard and be focused to receive it and follow along. The title itself is a tongue-in-cheek description of what the character experiences. A scratch is something very minor, inconsequential and nothing life-altering. Life moves on and she’s supposed to carry on with her life as if nothing happened yet in actuality what she experiences and the trauma that follows is giant, deep and all consuming. The authorial figure in the book is actually telegraphed for those that read it properly. She is “R” (naturally!) 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.

I love a circadian narrative and had heard interesting things about the experimental style used in this debut novel. I even heard Watson read a passage from it as part of a Faber online preview event and found it very funny and engaging. But I really should have tried an excerpt before requesting this for review; I would have seen at a glance that this wasn’t for me. I don’t have a problem with prose being formatted like poetry ( Girl, Woman, Other, Stubborn Archivist, the prologue of Wendy McGrath’s Santa Rosa), but here it seemed to me that it was only done to alleviate the tedium of the contents. But it wasn’t just that. After all, it’s a long-held tradition that women are given less artistic credit: they are assumed to be writing confessionally, channelling their experience for therapeutic gain. and I merely want to select the right book from my shelf that’ll interest him (the shelf inside my head I mean), so that I’m not just delivering any old thing,

October 2013

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. me softening, him softening, me not needing this, him not needing this, unable to still him how I used to but still, him softening, head tight my head tight tight tight tight why always this when I need it least, if I told him I was raped would he dismiss it? shrug his shoulders say good for you I know he would not be like that really really (and yet my head says he would) (well why don’t I try it then hey) Still, as I am now, as I keep my legs stiff, half bent, under the table, spooning cauliflower, still This morning, turning so that my eyes levelled with the bedside table, I saw two things: my phone flashing and spluttering away as the alarm went off, and Rebecca Watson’s novel Little Scratch. These first moments of awakening are captured by Watson in the first line of the novel: “I am traveling through, passing my own capillaries, red lines rushing by.” I decided my phone should have a longer lie-in than me and reached for Watson’s debut novel . 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.