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Description
**Selected as a Book of the Summer 2025 by the Guardian, The Times, Sunday Times, independent.co.uk, Vogue and Marie Claire**
**Selected as a 2025 book to look out for by the Guardian, Sunday Times, Irish Times, independent.co.uk, Cosmopolitan, Elle and Service95**
'Raw, original and provoking, Saba Sams is Britain's brightest debut novelist' Vogue
'An immersive story about love and the softening borders around what family can be' Sheena Patel
'A joy to read' The Times
'An intimate and tender exploration of love's possibilities' Sophie Mackintosh
'Raw, powerful and beautiful' Observer
'A nuanced exploration of friendship, queerness and love' Jessica Andrews
'I loved this' Nicola Dinan
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?
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.
Product details
Published | 19 Aug 2025 |
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Format | Paperback |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 240 |
ISBN | 9781526666482 |
Imprint | Bloomsbury Circus |
Dimensions | 216 x 135 mm |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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Saba Sams made waves with Send Nudes ... Now the 28-year-old author has written her first novel, about the bond between two women from different generations - and what happens when a baby arrives in the mix
THE TIMES, The 40 books to look out for in 2025 - the critics' picks
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Visceral and full-throated, this is fast becoming one of the year's stand-out books
PANDORA SYKES, SUNDAY TIMES
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A fresh and funny portrait of unexpected motherhood and alternative families ... Raw, tender and unusual.
GUARDIAN, Summer reading: the 50 hottest books to read now
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Gunk is the It novel to be seen with on the beach this summer ... A tale of unconventional parenthood and the fuzzy lines between friend and lover
THE TIMES, 80 best books to take on holiday this summer
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Gunk had me hooked. It is an intense immersion into the first days of motherhood ... Sams creates an intimacy that is slightly off-kilter and faintly disturbing but also desperately nurturing and loving. The characters are complex and awkward and brittle, with so much unsaid between them all, but Sams leaves us with glimmers of hope by the end for this wonderful family full of the possibilities of love
GUARDIAN, What we're reading
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A writer clearly worth watching ... Sams's prose is fresh as new paint ... Raw, powerful and beautiful in the plain-spokenness of a life cracking open to enfold a new being
OBSERVER