Rebecca Watson

London

Assistant Arts Editor at Financial Times

Author of little scratch (2021, @FaberBooks; @DoubledayBooks) and I Will Crash (4 July). Part-time assistant Arts editor, @FTWeekend.

Articles

What makes a good self-help book?

1 month ago | ft.com | Rebecca Watson

Last week, I was walking down the street when I spotted a woman reading in the window of a coffee shop.
Can erotic films move beyond pornography?

Jan 10, 2025 | ft.com | Rebecca Watson

In 1974, the French erotic film Emmanuelle was released in cinemas and caused a sensation with its profusion of nudity and sex.
Prawns His Sirens

Oct 16, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | Rebecca Watson |Adam Mars-Jones

Rebecca Watson’s I Will Crash, her second novel, takes as its subject sibling rivalry, though the phrase seems too mild. Brother-sister conflict most often appears (as it does for instance in Cocteau’s Les Enfants terribles) in the guise of a fatal closeness, but the struggle between Rosa, the book’s narrator, and her unnamed brother is a radical antagonism – even if his successful campaign of torture and intimidation when they were teenagers wasn’t visible to outsiders or their parents.
Gliff by Ali Smith — paranoia and control in a not too far-off future

Oct 15, 2024 | ft.com | Rebecca Watson

Briar and Rose have 42 tins of food. This is not a maths test.
Sally Rooney and the two sides of fame

Oct 4, 2024 | ft.com | Rebecca Watson

This weekend, Sally Rooney will be crowned a #1 Sunday Times bestseller.
Novelist Rebecca Watson: ‘What are siblings: twisted reflections of ourselves? Allies? Enemies?’

Sep 23, 2024 | theguardian.com | Rebecca Watson

This summer, when I was signing books after an event, I met a therapist who had bought my novel and who was planning to suggest it to her client, too. I Will Crash depicts a difficult sibling relationship and it was a reading experience she thought her client would find helpful. “We’re still behind in how we talk about siblings,” she said. “The taboo is strong.
Author Talk: Golden Hill: Francis Spufford in conversation with Rebecca Watson

Jul 20, 2024 | faber.co.uk | Rebecca Watson |Francis Spufford

Described by Richard Osman as ‘the best book of the century’, Golden Hill was first published in 2016 and won the Costa First Novel Award, the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and the British Book Awards Debut Novel of the Year.
A moment that changed me: My body was wedged between the train and platform - and my mortality rushed towards me

Jul 9, 2024 | theguardian.com | Rebecca Watson

The first feeling was embarrassment. What had happened was yet to catch up with me. All I knew was that I was looking into an open carriage, my body wedged into the gap between the tube and the platform, while strangers were staring from their seats in shock. It was 2015. I was 20 and on my way back from the airport, having been on holiday in Barcelona with some friends. My final year of university would begin in a few weeks.
The Euros give a glimpse of a purer patriotism

Jul 5, 2024 | ft.com | Rebecca Watson

Two weeks before Euro 2024 began, it came to me like a vision: it was time for a work sweepstake.
Ella Fox-Martens - Recollections May Vary

Jun 30, 2024 | literaryreview.co.uk | Rebecca Watson

Rebecca Watson possesses an uncanny ability to manipulate a reader’s gaze. The most immediately striking thing about both her debut novel, little scratch, and its successor, I Will Crash, is the corporeality of her language, the page becoming a stage. Indents and unconventional paragraph spacing force the eye to flick back and forth across the text. The effect is at once immersive and evocative.