Set during an atmospheric Yorkshire winter, raw content is the dark, tender and troubled story of a young mother afflicted by compulsive thoughts, whose past has taught her that love and fear are two sides of the same coin.
12th May 2025
Hardcover
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Summary
Set during an atmospheric Yorkshire winter, raw content is the dark, tender and troubled story of a young mother afflicted by compulsive thoughts, whose past has taught her that love and fear are two sides of the same coin.
Description
'raw content is a work of dark, aching beauty' Helen Jukes, author of Mother Animal
'A brooding and bruising psychodrama about the anxieties of 21st century motherhood, that links the primal potency of the female body with the northern landscape's elemental power' Stu Hennigan, author of Ghost Signs'My childhood was a map marked with danger zones . . . Me and my sister were cared for. We were bathed and fed and clothed. But, as with many children, we couldn't have told you if we were loved. Our experience of care came in the form of a warning'Grace's work requires her to be careful. She spends her days reading and editing legal case files, making sure the latest judgments are published as quickly and accurately as possible.But outside of her work, Grace is not a careful person. Her father's history as a police officer working across an infamous case shadows her life, as does the violent history entrenched across the Colne Valley landscape of her childhood, and her fears often surface as recklessness. When Grace becomes unexpectedly pregnant, she tries to accommodate her boyfriend and the prospect of the baby in her life. But after the relief and strange joy of the birth, Grace starts to imagine all sorts of terrible injuries and deaths befalling her child. The steep stairs to her apartment, the kitchen scissors, a boiling kettle all suddenly hold visceral and overwhelming potential for disaster. The baby's vulnerability terrifies her: fault-lines in her relationship begin to show, and her family history and repressed memories of violence break to the surface.Tender, gripping and life-affirming, raw content tells the story of a woman grappling with a new form of love that feels like a disaster.Critic Reviews
'raw content is a work of dark, aching beauty. This is the side of new motherhood we're still learning to speak: violent, tender, clarified - and ringing with determination and love. No one writes about landscape and the body the way that Booth does, and no one captures the strange lines of connection that run between them with such visceral precision. Brimming with Booth's love of language and literature, and her irrevocable knack for revealing us to ourselves' Helen Jukes, author of Mother Animal
'A brooding and bruising psychodrama about the anxieties of 21st century motherhood, linking the primal potency of the female body with the bleak northern landscape's terrible beauty' Stu Hennigan, author of Ghost Signs
'A luminous and visceral novel about new motherhood. Booth skillfully portrays a young woman's unravelling against the backdrop of a grittily beautiful Yorkshire landscape. No other novel has explored the terrifying and joyful transformations of parenthood with such dazzling power' Abi Curtis, author of The Headland
A brooding and bruising psychodrama about the anxieties of 21st century motherhood, that links the primal potency of the female body with the northern landscape's elemental power -- Stu Hennigan, author of Ghost Signs
About the Author
Naomi Booth is the author of the short story collection Animals at Night as well as the novels Exit Management and Sealed (all Dead Ink Books). Sealed is optioned by Erin Richards who is currently working on a script. Exit Management was listed as a Guardian Best Fiction Book of 2020 and Animals at Night was shortlisted for the 2023 Edge Hill Prize, winning the 'Reader's Choice' award. Naomi's other short fiction has been listed for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and the Galley Beggars Short Story Prize and anthologised in Best British Short Stories. Her story, 'Sour Hall', first published in Virago's 2020 collection Hag, was adapted into an Audible Originals drama series. Naomi grew up in West Yorkshire and now lives in York. She is an Associate Professor at Durham University, and also writes academic prose, including her recent, brilliantly reviewed, monograph on the literary history of swooning, Swoon: A Poetics of Passing Out.
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12th May 2025
