I am 24 when I read Darcey Steinke’s Suicide Blonde for the first time. A matter of months have passed since then and I cannot stop thinking about this book. I feel compelled to draw my thoughts together and formulate a wider meaning, to adequately explain the mastery of this novel and why it has such a lasting impact, to explore how it encapsulates the female experience so truthfully.

In March this year, two of the most incredible debut novels I have read were published, In Memoriam by Alice Winn, and Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin. Last month, both books were shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2023, an award created for exceptional debut novels voted for solely by booksellers.

If you want a classy night filled with beautiful, intricate, sometimes highfalutin soliloquies in Shakespearean tongue, you may want to give this one a miss. Although, plied with half a bottle of Jim Beam and five pints of Birra Moretti, there will certainly be one actor whose language you struggle to understand…