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Description
'An immersive story about love and the softening borders around what family can be' Sheena Patel
'An intimate and tender exploration of love's possibilities' Sophie Mackintosh
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. In the early hours of the morning, she paces home to sleep.
But then Leon hires nineteen-year-old Nim to work the bar with Jules – Nim, with her shaved head and steady pour, her disarming sweetness and sudden distance – and Jules finds herself jolted awake. 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?
Raw, exhilarating, tender and wise, Gunk is an electrifying debut novel exploring love and desire, safety and destruction, chaos and control – and family in all its forms.
Praise for Saba Sams
'Sams is the real deal' LUCY KIRKWOOD, GUARDIAN
'A bold new talent' STYLIST
'I can't wait to see what she writes next' PANDORA SYKES
Product details
| Published | 08 May 2025 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 240 |
| ISBN | 9781526621818 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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An intimate and tender exploration of love's possibilities, of the shapes it can find and create inside people, of how it is always surprising us. Its's a novel both quietly devastating and shimmeringly, acutely, observed
SOPHIE MACKINTOSH
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An immersive story about love and the softening borders around what family can be
SHEENA PATEL
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A beautifully constructed and perfectly written novel that shows there are no rules and no limits on a) love and b) what we might create (what we might birth) if we out aside old stuff and open ourselves up to the new. So special
JESSICA STANLEY
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I loved this ... A really delicate portrait of motherhood, the limits we (rightly or wrongly) place on our loved ones, and how those most willing to care for others may be the most ready to deny care for themselves
NICOLA DINAN
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Praise for Saba Sams: Saba Sams is a fresh new voice in fiction, wry and sharp and raw
EMMA CLINE
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Saba Sams's unsettling, full-throated fiction captures girls and young women on the brink of change
GUARDIAN, Books of the Year




















