Little Scratch

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The experimental comes gloriously to life, with a performance that has an element of music about it’ The Times She does feel rather obsessive, with a lot of swearing, but her environment is definitely contributing to this, with her boss saying to her about a lunch: That steak, Jesus Christ, bloodier than a tampon Director Katie Mitchell brilliantly rises to the challenge of adapting Rebecca Watson’s innovative debut novel for the stage' The book covers 24 hours in the life of an office worker., from the moment she gets up to bedtime. We see her daily routines like finding it difficult to get up to her struggles to get in the tube on time. As the book progresses we readers get little crumbs of her life: she has a long distant relationships, she does not like her boss and, more importantly she constantly feels itchy and scratches herself until she bleeds. Even as I wrote the review it was tempting to refer to elements of the plot that fit closely what I understand of the author’s life and experiences (in a way I am all too conscious I am far more likely to do with a female rather than make author). And very knowingly by the author the one time when the book diverts to a WhatsApp group chat (otherwise the narrator leaves them unread, instead just communicating with her Mum and her Him) it is for a brief discussion on female auto-fiction.

l ittle scratch’ is a virtuoso articulation of a remarkable piece of writing.' 'little scratch' reviewRecently, a stranger congratulated me on my book. “I loved it”, she told me, “it was so brave.” I was in the pub and my boyfriend was standing next to me. She asked, quietly by my ear, if that was my partner. I introduced them and she tilted her head towards him, saying, in a tone of hushed awe: “Wow, I feel like I know so much about you.”

On her influences, Watson cited Sarah Kane (playwright); Virginia Woolf; especially Between the Acts ; Eimear McBride; Meena Kandasamy—the link is ‘performative voices’ In interviews Rebecca Watson talks about the inspiration of Virginia Woolf, and because Little Scratch is a full on stream of consciousness from start to finish, the disjointed layout works well.The story originally started life as a prize shortlisted short story – and that story forms the midpoint of the day and is reproduced in full in the novel and gives a good sense of the book – much better than I think I have or can manage. I stopped playing football at secondary school. My interest in football dimmed; there was no space for it. Boys played football in PE; lunch breaks were for talking and messing. So why have I held on to the memory? I suspect it was an interest unresolved. Now, the delight of football is also my place in it. I am returning to a world that no longer has an entry fee. I can still feel like a fraud when I’m asked who I support. I imagine how a Forest fan might feel reading this, having experienced the highs and mainly lows for years, who knows the City Ground as well as their childhood bedroom. There is something territorial about football – partly because when you feel this strongly, it can cheapen the feeling to be reminded that anyone can claim the same. Our players, our manager, the game: it occupies a significant part of the imagination. Sometimes, I yearn for a team that’s been with me my whole life. I don’t want to give up Forest or Watford, what I yearn for is something verifiable. I want my love of football to sound legitimate. But I don’t need that. Not really. I have the joy of the game, and I have what it teaches me. Adapted from Rebecca Watson’s ‘daringly experimental debut’ novel ( Guardian), little scratch is a fearless and exhilarating account of a woman’s consciousness over the course of 24 hours. The charged narrative records in precise detail her impressions of a deceptively ordinary day - the daily commute, office politics and a constant barrage of texts on WhatsApp – and as the day goes on, she gradually starts to unveil the trauma of a rape that is consuming her. Exploring how the human mind internalizes, distracts, and survives the darkest moments, Katie Mitchell, with sound score by Melanie Wilson, brings Miriam Battye’s adaptation to compelling life. I usually find the assumptions funny or psychologically interesting, at other times a tedious balancing act of correcting or letting go. People’s reactions are not mine to control; nor, in a way, is the book.

The text (as my opening and closing quotes show) brings in ideas of linearity in thought and conventionality in writing (for example when the narrator finds some notes discarded by a colleague in the women’s toilet bin). Bias is too adhesive for denial to do much. But the assumption and the expectation can be unpleasant. During one live radio interview, it increasingly became clear that the presenter wanted me to say that the protagonist’s trauma was my own. They would ask a question and not get the response they wanted, only to try another way. Asked about the message of the book, Watson responded that she wanted to portray trauma in its entirety, “what it would be like to be in the head of someone for a day non-stop, rather than just in those moments of extremity” ( Source)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. Rebecca Watson is one of The Observer’s 10 best debut novelists of 2021 and was shortlisted for this year's Desmond Elliott Prize. My book, I should make clear now, is a novel. little scratch is a fictional day-in-the-life of a young woman (who, yes, has a boyfriend). Told in the first person, the narrator lives in London and works as an assistant full-time in a newspaper office. The reader inhabits her mind as she goes about her day, getting up, going to work, and cycling to the pub – all while attempting to surmount a trauma that she has yet to fully confront.