#colwill brown

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh

Colwill Brown’s We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is full of Yorkshire vocabulary that will fascinate American readers. There’s “aught,” for example, which can either mean “anything” or “nothing” depending on the context.

The word that I find myself dwelling on, though, is “sozlike.” It’s a form of “sorry,” but that “like” is in there at every instance, making the expression sound conditional. I’m sorry, like…I’m, like, sorry?

Among the three girls at the center of Brown’s debut novel, the expression is sometimes made in the form of a simple shrug, omitting the explicit apology altogether. That’s a function of how well the girls know each other — mere body language is enough — but it can also be read as a symptom of a culture where neither emotional vulnerability nor self-expression are particularly prized.

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh: A Novel