I was pleased to be approved for this book as it sounded intriguing.

It is written in an experimental style using the stream of consciousness technique. I am sorry to say I did not enjoy this book, but I am sure the fault was all mine as a reader. The format and layout means that it is difficult to follow any formal narrative. The words are all over the page and I found it impossible to string together any logical story. I can see from the blurb that the narrator is processing a sexual violent attack against the humdrum existence of an ordinary day. The language used is strong and insistent, which I found disturbing and unnecessary.

Little Scratch is a compelling stream of consciousness novella, following an unnamed protagonist through one day in the office.

It's a fraught and sensitive exploration of sexual trauma. I often find experimental forms alienating, but somehow Watson strikes the perfect balance between free-fall and fragmentation. I got caught up in the flow of it and read it all in one sitting.

Emotionally fraught and compulsive, Little Scratch is a little book that packs a lot of punch.

I must admit to feeling a bit put off by the kindle format of this novel. Superficial, I know, but still. However, this is an extraordinary piece of work. Tackling the controversial and difficult subject of sexual abuse, the form is apt, really - a mix of twitter feed, poetry, fragments of ideas. It takes chances, yes, but *relevant* chances, certainly if the purpose of the form is to reflect the subject. From a personal viewpoint, I like a writer who will do this, and I applaud the publishers for taking a chance on this. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, for sure, and it certainly could have been a massive failure, but it isn't, actually, it works. I'll be keeping my eye out for anything else by Watson.

Although interesting, the format of this novel made it hard for me to actually enjoy it, instead it felt like a chore and I was glad that it’s rather short. As a result of this unusual format, it’s probably not a book for everyone.

However this original format could be ground breaking for other readers and I have to say that the subject matter is important.

I love a stream of consciousness narrative (and a one day novel!) so much, and I’ve read lots, but I have to say that Watson’s gives one the best representations of consciousness that I’ve seen. It’s incredibly close to the way that brains work - or the way that mine does anyway - with the darting and layering of thoughts, of multiple ideas of different levels of importance, relevance and clarity happening simultaneously. It reminded me a little of Peach by Emma Glass, which also deals with the trauma of assault, but I enjoyed it far more, possibly because Watson weaves little burst of humour and humanity in so well. You leave the novel not even knowing the name of the first person protagonist but rooting for her all the same.

I loved the concept of this book. It is unlike anything else I have every read, it wasn't an easy read but that's part of what makes it good and important.

‪I feel like a lot of novels are branded ‘inventive’ but little scratch genuinely is. Not everyone will appreciate it and I imagine that it will polarise opinion but I’m firmly a fan.

I read the ebook on my phone which I initially thought was going to be a mistake (and I worried that it would do a disservice to the novel) but I soon found that it actually suited the formatting and pacing in that I absolutely raced through it‬. I then read it again in case I’d missed anything the first time!

Despite the hard hitting subject matter (a woman dealing with the aftermath of being raped by her boss) Watson also includes flashes of office-based black humour that reminded me of the work of Halle Butler.

‪I’d recommend that you read it in as few bursts as possible, then read it again‬. The New Me meets Emma Glass’s Peach meets Ducks, Newburyport.

Hmm, this is a hard one to review because Watson is striving to do something fresh here in attempting to give voice to experience. The topic of sexual trauma is always an important one, and it's complicated here by issues of #metoo power and powerlessness, as well as the impact of rape on an existing loving relationship and with the victim's own body.

While I applaud the way this book approaches a crucial topic of our moment, I didn't feel that the writerly choices made here really move the articulation of experience on. The much-vaunted form of 'stream-of-consciousness' gets bandied around a lot in reviews but, strictly speaking, this is more a free-form internal voice: I don't recognise it as the noise in my head, for example, as this is too grammatically formed, too self-aware and conscious, even laughing at its own little jokes. It's also the case that (and I realise there's no easy way to do this) experience is still translated into words, we're still listening to a mind speaking to itself, not experiencing what happens to a body which might be where the book was trying to go.

It is interesting to use columns to structure parallel events, so one column to quote e.g. reading of texts on the commute while another is the inner commentary on them but the book doesn't escape its own textuality. At times, this feels like an almost send-up of Woolf mashed up with Plath.

A striking experiment, if not completely successful to this reader. Well done, though, to the author and Faber & Faber for taking a risk on this.

A tough book to review. On one hand I feel like this would be a really easy book to critique. But on the other hand, the risks the author took in terms of writing this are very clear - it's a courageous book in form, style, and theme. In many ways, it is DARING you to find it self-indulgent, which is an interesting position to put the reader in. Dare to take me seriously, the book is saying (at least to me). And that deserves credit and acknowledgement. It made me think of this David Graeber quote: "If we really want to understand the moral grounds of economic life, and, by extension, human life, it seems to me that we must start instead with the very small things." I would be interested in seeing what the author writes next.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.

A full day inside the mind of another person sounds fun, right? Wrong (but also kind’ve right...). This book takes you on an exhausting and emotionally raw 12 hour journey through a very typical day-in-the-life of the narrator. However, inside she faces the difficulties of dealing with sexual abuse and subsequent self harm.

Layout wise, this book took me a while to get used to and I just couldn’t work the pace out — sometimes I’d be reading slowly as if it were poetry and other times the words would be racing through my mind. But the thing I had to keep reminding myself was that there are no rules to a stream of consciousness and for me, it’s the difficulties I had that make this book so beautiful. The narrator is struggling and it only makes sense that we, the reader (lister? Observer?) would also struggle being inside her head with her. I noticed a lot of similarities between this and Strange Hotel by Eimear McBride in the way that both are so beautifully confusing.

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this as much as I did, but now I think it is one of the best books I have ever read. This is a true masterpiece.

The term stream of consciousness is bandied about a lot to describe books, but this is a true example of the form. Whilst reading I found myself trying think of other books to compare this to, and the only real comparisons I could come up with were Ducks, Newburyport (only ever so slightly comparable for the immersion into the protagonists train of thought) and Exquisite Cadavers (for the seldom used - in my experience - form of multiple vertical columns of text to indicate simultaneously occurring thoughts).

little scratch takes the reader into the mind of a young woman as she goes about her life; mostly at work but also when she goes on a date. The unnamed protagonist flits from thought to thought, often spiralling back to her recent rape at the hands of her boss and the self harm which has begun in response to this. Her thoughts are droll, the humour dry, and a lot of the workplace observations highly relatable (in the vein of The New Me). In spite of the heavy subject matter this makes for an accessible and propulsive novel which is hard to put down.

I found this to be a memorable, acerbic read, and one I'd recommend to others who are in search of a novel which plays with form and does not pull any punches in its depiction of sexual trauma.

little scratch is an experimental novel that follows the every thought of an unnamed woman as she goes through her day. She is an assistant in an office, getting through the mundane by clock watching and refilling her water bottle, but is also dealing with recent sexual assault by her boss, and how she might tell her boyfriend that it happened. Her thoughts and actions are followed as she gets up, goes to work, and meets her boyfriend, in a glimpse into everyday life and the impact of trauma upon it.

The book is laid out in a distinctive way, looking more like poetry than typical prose, and with sections that run concurrent, meaning that it needs to be read at pace to get the right effect. This works really well to get across the sense of thoughts, especially when listening or taking in something else at the same time, though some people, possibly people who prefer to take in books more slowly and not skim read, might find this too stressful or difficult to manage. For me, it made the book fast-paced and really captured the ways in which things don't actually happen in a linear fashion, but simultaneously, whilst also getting across the spaces and waiting in everyday life.

In terms of narrative, it is mostly unfolding previous events, particularly her assault, but also the anticipation for the end of the day and her plans for it, the kind of narrative many people have on a Friday. These two elements are well-combined to get across the complexity of this protagonist's balance to keep existing in a regular way, whilst also processing trauma. This isn't a book focused on big events happening, but on every detail that is occurring, which is another element that will probably divide people.

I found little scratch an engaging book, with a stream of consciousness style that worked well to allow me to read it very fast (something I like to be able to do anyway). The method of delivery and the kind of mundanity (including toilet trips and travelling) it covers will probably divide readers, but the style tells a lot of the story, and it would be good to see other ways in which this kind of structure and writing could facilitate telling stories that are hard to get across in more 'normal' linear prose.