Lavender Menace volunteer Zoe Robertson reviews Freakslaw by Jane Flett.

Freakslaw by Jane Flett lures readers into the candyfloss-fogged fray of a grisly, gruesome fairground, examining prejudice and personal identity in 1990s Scotland.

Told through a series of vignette-like chapters, bouncing from perspective to perspective, the novel follows a gaggle of carnival performers as they infiltrate the town of Pitlaw. Armed with acrobatics and a drill, the performers are hellbent on bringing debaucherous joy to the unsuspecting locals whilst seeking revenge for a historical atrocity committed against fellow marginalised people on the land.

Stumbling into their dazzling world are Pitlaw residents Ruth (St Andrews-bound maths whizz with a burgeoning rebellious streak), Derek (a closeted gay teen who finds love amongst the coconut shies and peanut stalls), and his father Boyd (a
staunch conformist who rules the household with an iron, anti-union, anti-everything fist), who will either fall for the charm of the Freakslaw show or flail violently in their clutches.

Irreverent and bizarre, Flett’s writing style is at times too flippant yet immediately engrossing – emphasis on the ‘gross’ – and her depiction of life in a lethargic rural North East town resistant to change or ‘difference’ is immediately, painfully, familiar. From the novel’s core concept of a travelling group being received with hostility by the local community evoking childhood memories of similar attitudes lobbied at Traveller communities passing through my own hometown, to the well-captured feeling of being doomed to be stuck in a withering commuter village despite efforts to rage against it, to people unanimously agreeing that the guy operating the waltzers is the slickest person they’ve ever seen, Flett presents a bonkers, yet accurate, representation of the Shire in a sticky, nasty bottle.

Freakslaw by Jane Flett was published in June 2024, with Flett a recipient of the Scottish Book Trust’s New Writers Award.

Content warnings for the novel include, but are not limited to: Sexual assault, abortion, homophobia and homophobic violence, transphobia and transphobic violence, ableism, fatphobia, gore, child and domestic abuse.

Review by Zoe Robertson

Lavender Links

At Lavender Menace, we love to find connections between new releases and the older titles on our archive shelves. Whenever we review a new book on the blog, we’ll be pairing it with a book from the archive. We might choose Lavender Links based on genre, setting, characters or  just the general vibe!

Is there another book that Freakslaw reminds you of? Let us know in the comments!

Freakslaw’s Lavender Link… 

Could It Be Magic? by Paul Magrs

Why we chose this book: Both Could It Be Magic? and Freakslaw have an untamed, wild energy about them, reminicent of Angela Carter, mixing debauchery and dark fantasy with everyday life in a small town. While Freakslaw is set in 1997 in rural North-East Scotland, Could It Be Magic? was published in 1998 and set on a council estate in North-East England.