Slags 🚬

By Emma Jane Unsworth.

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

“You're fifteen, aren't you? Yeah, so I know what I'm talking about.”

Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth opens with a deliberately provocative definition of the word it reclaims, setting the tone for a book that is sharp, funny, uncomfortable and quietly reflective.

At its centre are sisters Sarah and Juliette, setting off on a whisky fuelled campervan road trip across Scotland to mark Juliette’s birthday. What begins as a messy, bickering reunion slowly becomes a space for old wounds to surface.

Sarah is 41, newly sober, emotionally stalled and increasingly alienated from friends who appear to have followed the expected life script. Juliette is younger, married with children, apparently settled, yet harbouring doubts of her own.

Their journey is punctuated by flashbacks to Sarah’s teenage years, capturing the intensity, confusion and vulnerability of being 15 in the 90s, complete with pop culture references and an ill advised fixation on her English teacher.

The structure works well, moving between past and present to show how ideas about love, worth and womanhood calcify over time. Teenage Sarah believes romance will fix everything. Adult Sarah no longer believes in much at all, least of all men.

Juliette, who once seemed to choose the safer path, reveals that security has not protected her from uncertainty. The book handles these contrasts with acid humour and a real eye for uncomfortable truths, particularly around female ageing, desire, regret and resentment.

The sibling dynamic is handled with real precision, showing how intimacy and distance can exist side by side within family bonds. The shared history, petty irritations, buried loyalty and half spoken truths feel painfully accurate. There is hostility between Sarah and Juliette, but it is recognisable and often darkly funny. I did not particularly like either of them, which feels intentional. These are not softened or idealised women, and the book is stronger for it.

A central theme is the perceived divide between women with children and women without. As a child free adult, this part resonated with me in complicated ways. My husband and I have made a conscious, mutual decision not to have children, and it is a fulfilling and thoughtful choice, not a placeholder or a failure to grow up. While the book does acknowledge the pressure placed on women to follow a particular life path, it still leans at times towards the familiar stereotype that a woman without children is somehow stalled or clinging to her past. This is questioned, but not pushed as far as I would have liked, and it left me slightly frustrated.

Slags is often insightful, frequently funny, and surprisingly moving. It is less about the road trip itself and more about what happens when women stop pretending they are fine with the lives they have built or avoided. Messy, honest and very readable, this is a book that lingers more than you might expect.

Thank you to the team at Borough Press and Words Wine And Wit Book Club for running this book-tour!

The book is out now and available to purchase.

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