JUNe BOOK OF THE MONTHGunk by Saba Sams
Jules has been divorced from her ex-husband Leon for five years, but she still works alongside him at Gunk, the grotty student nightclub he owns in central Brighton. She spends her nights serving shots and watching, from behind the bar, as Leon flirts with students on the dancefloor.
But then Leon hires nineteen-year-old Nim to work the bar – and her arrival jolts Jules awake for the first time in years. When Nim discovers she's pregnant, Jules agrees to help. As the months pass, and the relationship between the two women grows increasingly intimate and perplexing, it emerges that Nim has her own unexpected gifts to give.
Now, alone in her small flat, Jules is holding a baby, just twenty-four hours old, who still smells of Nim. But no one knows where Nim is, or if she's coming back. What could the future – for Jules, Nim, and this unnamed baby – possibly look like?
interviewA Conversation with Saba Sams
In our conversation with Saba Sams, we discussed writing about bodies, birth, and care, emphasising the need to witness these visceral experiences on the page. Saba also reflects on alternative family set ups and the cultural and structural barriers to communal child raising in the UK.
“At times nurturing, at times claustrophobic, it’s a masterclass in stripping back the politics of the different connections that we can have between people”
REVIEW BY EMILY GOULDINGSaba Sams’ Gunk tells the story of the increasingly intimate and complex relationship between the frustrated ex-wife of a student nightclub owner and the enigmatic young woman hired to work the establishment's bar. It’s a story of desire, repression, and control but, above all, it’s one that reframes the word family, exploring all the forms that it can take.
