Freakslaw

Jane Flett’s Freakslaw is filthy, furious and unlike anything else I’ve read. When a travelling carnival arrives in the repressed Scottish town of Pitlaw, its performers offer local outsiders Ruth and Derek the possibility of escape. The townspeople, however, see only bodies, identities and desires that offend everything they consider normal.

I loved Flett’s wild, excessive writing. The fair feels alive with neon, sex, witchcraft and wonderfully grotesque characters, while Pitlaw is simmering with cruelty long before the visitors arrive. Beneath all the spectacle is a powerful story about finding family among people who refuse to make you smaller.

This is graphic, strange and deliberately confrontational, with violence, body horror and plenty of explicit sex. Queer, punk and gloriously unruly, Freakslaw turns marginalisation into power and gives its outsiders the bloody revenge fantasy they deserve.