To be selected for Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists list two years before your debut novel comes out must bring a certain amount of pressure. Saba Sams had already been named a rising star for her short-story collection, Send Nudes; one of the stories, Blue 4eva, won the 2022 BBC National short story award. Now comes Gunk, titled for the grotty student nightclub managed by the thirtysomething protagonist, Jules. The fried egg on the cover hints at a sleazy edge: expect hangover breakfasts with a dawn chorus soundtrack. It’s also a playful nod to more tender themes of fertility panic, unplanned pregnancy and young motherhood.
At the heart of Gunk is a not-quite-love-not-quite-triangle between Jules, her feckless ex-husband Leon, nightclub owner and irredeemable waster, and the young, mysterious Nim. Nim arrives one night at the club and captivates both Jules and Leon with her shaved head, her alluring mouth (“big and wet and laughing”), and the sense that she’s on the run from her old life. Much of the novel is told through flashback. Before we encounter Nim at the club, we know that she has had a baby, left him with Jules, and vanished. Jules is alone trying to comfort a newborn that “knew by smell, by taste, that I was not his mother”. The main narrative consists of Jules telling us how this state of affairs came to pass.
