Ask me anything at all – I’m really unoffendable!” Emma Jane Unsworth has unwittingly uttered the phrase every interviewer longs to hear – though the invitation isn’t that surprising. It feels reassuringly on brand for the author of some of the past decade’s most daring and subversive books exploring the millennial and Gen X female experience. You only have to read Animals, her gritty, zeitgeist-capturing 2014 novel about two friends “ruining their bodies” by living in a constant state of off-their-tits hedonism, to know that here sits a writer unafraid to grasp the nettle of boundary-pushing subject matter. Described as “Withnail for girls” by an admiring Caitlin Moran, the book was subsequently adapted into a feature film starring Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat.
Unsworth’s follow-up, 2020’s Adults, traverses the thorny territory of miscarriage, mental health and social media addiction; her latest novel, the provocatively titled Slags, is an equally unflinching foray into first love, fantasy and sexual identity.
