Disturbance, Jenna Clake

Image credit: Jamie Logue

Propulsive and wry, this razor-sharp debut is perfect for fans of Boy Parts and My Year of Rest and Relaxation explores all the ways that relationships and trauma can haunt our lives.

As the sun sets on a feverishly hot July evening, a young woman spies on her teenage neighbour, transfixed by what looks like an occult ritual to banish an ex-boyfriend. Desperate to expel the claustrophobic memories of her own ex that have followed, the narrator decides to try to hex herself free from her past.

She falls in with the neighbour and her witchy friend, exploring nascent supernatural powers as the boundaries of reality shift in and out of focus. But when the creaks and hums of her apartment escalate into something more violent, she realizes that she may have brought her boyfriend’s presence – whether psychological or paranormal – back to haunt her.

Author Bio

Jenna Clake is a poet who was born in Staffordshire in 1992. Her debut collection of poetry, Fortune Cookie, won the Melita Hume prize in 2016, and was published in 2017 by Eyewear. It received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2018, and was shortlisted for a Somerset Maugham Award in the same year. Her pamphlet of prose poems, CLAKE/ Interview for, was published by Verve Poetry Press in 2018, and was featured as a spring pamphlet in the Poetry Book Society Bulletin in 2019. She was shortlisted for the inaugural Rebecca Swift Women Poets' Prize, commended in the University of Hertfordshire Single Poem Prize, and placed second in the Newcastle Poetry Prize in 2018.  Her poetry criticism has appeared in Poetry London, The Poetry School, The Compass and The Poetry Review. Her second collection Museum of Ice Cream was published by Bloodaxe in 2021. Her debut novel Disturbance will be published by Trapeze (UK) and Norton (US) in 2023.