Saba Sams was selected as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists in 2023, and her 2023 ‘Send Nudes’ short story collection won plaudits from all quarters. ‘Gunk’ is her first novel and it certainly doesn’t disappoint. It begins: “The baby is twenty-four hours and seventeen minutes old.” Narrating is Julie and she’s struggling to bond, because, as she says: “I’m not the baby’s mother, and this is why he cries.” The story then jumps back in time to let Julie fill us in on her backstory. Aged eighteen she moves from the suburbs of Portslade into Brighton, largely to get away from her overbearing parents. She doesn’t fancy university (“if I did I’d likely have to return home for the holidays, and this put me off”) so she gets a job in recruitment. At a nightclub one evening she meets the feckless Leon, the club’s owner. The pair get married, and Julie ends up working at the club. They eventually divorce, but Julie keeps her old job at the club and bonds with Nim, a singular young woman who secures work behind the bar. The pair’s increasingly complicated relationship then comes under strain when Nim falls pregnant. The book’s title ‘Gunk’ is the name of the student haunt where Julie works, but it’s also an apt descriptor of the messy relationships that Sams explores here with incredible verve, perception and no little wit. It’s a novel that grips from the get-go and I doubt I’ll read a better debut this year. RM

Published by Bloomsbury Circus