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.
“It’s got to be a bit scary, I think, hasn’t it?” Unsworth says of her work. “Quite often I’m cringing when I’m writing, and quite often I’m terrified – like, ‘shall I put this? Really?’”
That rawness translates into realness on the page; Unsworth has a knack for sketching out nuanced characters who feel viscerally alive. Slags is no exception, told from the perspective of 41-year-old Sarah as she and her younger sister, Juliette, embark on a birthday road trip to Scotland, which segues into an uncomfortable yet poignant trip down memory lane.
While Unsworth’s women are often plagued by inner turmoil and darkness, they are also whip-smart and belly-laugh witty – unlike a lot of the wilting protagonists found in the trendy “sad girl” literary trope. “We should be allowed to contain all these multitudes – able to be very funny, but also really troubled and lost and messy,” she says. “For me, that’s what carries the momentum, the joy in that sharp dialogue.” You can get away with a lot, she adds – and have characters doing “pretty awful things” – if you make them fun to be around. “Then your readers will come along for the ride and enjoy it.”
Unsworth thrums with energy when I meet her at a London café in the build-up to publication day. Clad in wide-legged, white pin-striped trousers with a matching waistcoat, she’s the kind of effortlessly cool forty-something woman who would be intimidating were it not for her instant, disarming warmth. Pale skin is complemented by strawberry blonde curls, tamed and pulled away from her face; dark blue eyes are clear and bright as she talks a hundred miles a minute in her subtle Mancunian twang. “A few weeks ago, I felt sick with nerves,” she admits of Slags’ forthcoming release. “Now, I’m calm. It’s in the hands of the book gods.”
The book’s plotleaps back and forth through time, oscillating between Sarah as an adult and as a teenager. Do we ever truly shake off the identity that is set for us in those formative years? “I think we come of age over and over again in life,” Unsworth answers thoughtfully. “And I think at those points, that’s when we feel like we’re defined. That definition, when you’re young, can be so shaped by other people, so much to do with what other people tell you that you are.”
Her own teen self was “gobby”, loud and attention-seeking – but she “wasn’t very solid”. “Part of the inspiration for the book was just wanting to make myself, the teenage me who’s still inside, more resilient,” Unsworth says. Fifteen-year-old Sarah fits the same mould. With so many hormones kicking around, she sizzles with power and confidence yet is quivering with fragility and innocence beneath the brash facade. It’s an affliction that, Unsworth believes, impacts teenage girls no matter which era they’re born in: “You have all this desire and a burning urge to express yourself and work out who you are and put yourself out there. But at the same time, you’re really vulnerable.” How can we empower and protect teenage girls at the same time? “I feel like that’s what we need to do, but I don’t know what the answer is. The book is in some way an exploration of that dilemma.”
She posits that female fantasy could be one essential outlet, offering young women agency and autonomy in a world that often robs them of both. The young Sarah lives inside a world of romantic make-believe so potent it seems to warp the very fabric of reality to fit the narrative in her head. “I think we’re encouraged to feel ashamed of our fantasies, especially women,” muses Unsworth. “It’s like a dirty, silly word, all frilly knickers and s*** porn. But actually, fantasies can be so nourishing and valuable and strengthening. I’ve definitely used them as such a healing place in my life.”
Since her own adolescence, Unsworth has had a “big recalibration of who I am and what I want” about once a decade. Much of her former sense of identity was bound up in the vision of herself as the eternal “party girl”, epitomised by the uncouth, seize-the-night double-act in Animals (“I will always push the f***-it button. I love pushing the f***-it button,” she jokes). Her writing frequently explores the relationship between female characters and their drinking and substance-taking; there’s a fascination with the sometimes blurred distinction between addict and hedonist.
Unsworth very much defines herself as the latter. For her, there’s always been something inherently romantic about the idea of intoxication; it symbolises “freedom, a tipping point”. “Addiction is a trap and it’s a disease, and it’s a terrible thing that ruins whole families and lives,” she says, “but for me, my relationship with drugs and alcohol has always been about oblivion. They represent a chaos that means you can be and do anything. It’s almost like a place you go and disintegrate from everything that society expects you to be…”
I speak as someone who constantly questions whether it was the right thing for me to have children
But there are some societal expectations it’s near-impossible to escape. Getting on it every night simply isn’t compatible with Unsworth’s current life as a mother of two young children and daughter of ageing parents; it’s a gear shift that part of her has fought tooth and nail against, part of her has submitted to. “Parenting is its own kind of joy, and its own responsibility – my children need a lot from me physically right now.”
Having had kids in her late thirties, Unsworth both loves and wrestles with the role of “mother”. “Regret is something that interests me,” she says, “And I speak as someone who constantly questions whether it was the right thing for me to have children personally, as well as feeling very grateful that they exist.” While any big life decision feels heavy, the baby question is on a whole other level, she argues – “it’s such a gnarly one for women”. As someone who feels the absurd weight of that choice increasing exponentially the closer I get to 40 myself, the observation hits home.
It’s a theme that’s adroitly navigated in Slags. Sarah is a Gen X workaholic who’s voluntarily single; her younger sister has done the marriage and kids thing. The former laments that “it is so hard to walk the walk of being a childfree woman”, even by choice – and though Unsworth is no longer walking that particular path herself, its challenges still resonate. “It’s really insidious, the way that pressures are put onto women to do certain things and be a certain way by a certain age,” she says. “We’re still advertised that it’s more valuable to have a life if you’re a mother, and that there’s only one way to be a mother.” But she has always fought to present a counter-narrative in her work – “different happy endings, different routes that are equally meaningful and valuable and fulfilling.”
What’s perhaps most enchanting about Slags is the central relationship between the two sisters. It’s gratifying to see in literature what has been deftly achieved on screen in recent years in shows such as Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabagand Aisling Bea’s This Way Up: an irresistibly authentic depiction of the female sibling dynamic in all its knotty complexity.Sarah and Juliette hold a mirror up to one another, the only people schooled in their own secret language built on a lifetime of shared cultural references and experiences.
Inspired by the relationship between Sarah and Juliette – they speak of a “heart alarm”, a golden thread attached to the ribs that runs between them – and my own sister/soulmate, I wonder aloud whether siblings can end up being the real loves of each other’s lives. “Oh, completely,” agrees Unsworth, herself a big sister (a status that, she believes, has defined every other relationship she’s ever had). “Who else do you have a shared history with like that?” She describes the relationship she has with her younger sister – three years Unsworth’s junior – as the “most complicated” of her life. After growing up together, you’re left with something that’s “extremely complex, durable, heartbreaking, terrifying but edifying,” says the author.
On top of “big sister”, Unsworth has recently acquired two new labels following an ADHD and autism diagnosis last year. The former was expected; the latter, not so much. The revelation has prompted her to probe the interplay between neurodivergence and intoxication. “It’s made me think about how much I’ve used things like alcohol, because it’s a coping mechanism, at parties and things like that – as well as really enjoying it.”
But there’s undoubtedly been a generational shift when it comes to getting s***-faced. In Slags, Sarah is dabbling in sobriety but finds it painfully boring; she mourns “the slow limp of Saturday nights where no one went out any more to pound pavements with their passion or fury”, noting that Gen Z prefer coffee and conversation to pubs and clubs. Though she’s not judging the next generation, Unsworth doesn’t necessarily believe the shift from binge-drinking to wellness culture has been as “healthy” as it sounds.
Every now and then, you just need that big fire for your head
“The ideas about what’s beautiful and the way that women should look… sadly, it’s not all this free and easy wellbeing goodness,” she says. “I actually think there’s still a lot of pressure and a lot of anxiety, a lot of damage being done to people.”
She believes there’s something to be said for letting go and losing control on occasion, arguing that a big night out can cut through life’s noise and stresses. “It feels like a cleanse, when everything’s razed to the ground,” she says wistfully. “Every now and then, you just need that big fire for your head...”
A cognitive reset is as likely to come from the shocking temperature change between the beachside sauna and ice bath in Unsworth’s adopted home town of Brighton as it is from mind-altering substances these days. But it might not be that way forever. She has a fantasy of herself in her seventies, running around Soho, drinking and dancing and having a wild old time. I can picture it too: silver curls untamed; eyes still clear and bright; a cocktail in one hand and a large glass of wine in the other. “I think there’ll always be a party girl in me,” she says with a smile. “She’s having a little bit of a nap at the moment – but she’s going to be back on her feet raging again in the future.”
Slags is published by HarperCollins on 8 May
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