What an opening to a short story: “Later, when I knew her better, Manda told me how she’d beaten two girls at once outside the Crane-makers Arms in Carlisle.” There’s more, much more. Manda Slessor comes from a family where violence is a way of life. Violence underpins each sentence, language taken from the animal world to describe the human world.
I was worried and smiling, all at the same time, as a reader. There’s no messing with Manda, I thought. The writing is overpowering, unique, but similar to Mantel with its original turn of phrase and local dialect. Hall takes you into the guts of the character.
‘Butcher’s Perfume’ is gripping, filled with tension (great use of short sentences) and unsettling. It’s brilliant to be in the world of ‘Butcher’s Perfume’, but I was glad to leave it too.
First published in The Beautiful Indifference, Faber and Faber, 2011
A Personal Anthology 