In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Sam Beckbessinger’s debut novel Femme Feral is a striking feminist satire.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“A darkly entertaining feminist satire…This tale of women’s rage against societal marginalization builds to a satisfying and bloody end, with Beckbessinger using the tropes of werewolf horror to provide her tough-as-nails heroines with a sense of power, retribution, and gratification. This has bite.”
In her own words, here is Sam Beckbessinger’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Femme Feral:
Femme Feral is a book about a woman who thinks she’s going through perimenopause, but is actually turning into a werewolf. Underneath that extremely serious premise, it’s a novel about the ugly emotions we repress—rage, grief—and what they curdle into when we ignore them.
A big part of what I was writing through was my own inability to feel a whole range of emotions, especially anger. Call it a combo of being a parentified child, a lifelong “good girl”, and the product of a whole culture that finds women’s fury unacceptable, but I spent most of my life honestly believing that I never felt angry.
The great power of the midlife shift, for many women, is that it’s the moment where a lot of our lifelong coping strategies fail, and we’re forced to confront everything that’s been burbling and rotting deep inside ourselves. For me, it’s been a grotesque and ultimately very healing time.
I’ve always used music as a crowbar to access emotions that I usually hide from myself. As a teenager, I remember lying in the bathtub and listening to Radiohead while dribbling water down my cheeks pretending I was crying. When I was writing Femme Feral, I listened to a lot of furious music, mostly ’90s Riot Grrrl, while walking for hours around London. Here are some of the songs that bled into the pages.
Seether – Veruca Salt
The working title of the book that became Femme Feral was “Snarltooth”, because of this song, which perfectly captures the horror of realising there’s something furious inside you that can’t be releashed once it’s been unreleased. “I tried to calm her down … I tried to cram her back in my mouth…” I was quite inspired by the song’s ambiguity about whether the seething creature is something inhabiting you, or if it’s just you.
Everything In Its Right Place – Radiohead
Ellie, my protagonist, is a woman who tries to keep her life together through complex productivity systems. She has a never-ending to-do list that she recites in her head like a mantra. I love how this song juxtaposes the repeated stuttering “everything in its right place” with a sound that feels frantic, increasingly unravelling. Control as a coping mechanism that’s starting to fail.
Under the Table – Fiona Apple
Is there a better lyrical chronicler of fury than Fiona Apple? Her brilliant song Werewolf would have been an easy pick, but Under the Table’s the one that belongs in this book, with the quiet defiance of “kick me under the table all you want, I won’t shut up”.
I started working on this book at a really weird time. I’d just uprooted my whole life and moved from South Africa to the other side of the world to the UK, where I was excited to get to travel and enjoy the thrills of living in the big city! Except, haha, it was January 2020. I hadn’t made a single friend before we got locked down, I couldn’t go home, and I felt like I’d been stranded on a desert island.
The aptly-named album Fetch the Bolt Cutters came out in April that year, and I spent endless hours listening to it, walking and walking and walking around the city by myself, the first scenes of this book starting to form in my mind.
Werewolves of London – Warren Zevon
How could I not? London is a city with a long lycanthropic lineage in literature and film, which I had a lot of fun playing with. Observant readers will spot references to An American Werewolf in London, specifically.
Of course, the practical plotting problem I faced with a werewolf running around London in the early 2020s, which my forebears didn’t have to worry about, was … what the heck do I do about all the CCTV footage? Solving that problem led me to one of the book’s most playful setpieces, which is something I literally stumbled on during one of my long rambles around the city. I can say no more!
Also, “I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand” is one of the most hilarious opening lines of any song.
Venom – Little Simz
And a nod to contemporary London, with rage growing from problems that are structural and political as well as personal. I could happily listen to Little Simz’ virtuosic wordplay forever “I’m a mess honestly … when I dig deep, I can never find nothing left, it’s a mystery, rage, nothing but rage, can’t figure out if I’m going insane…”.
Second Skin – The Gits
A song about the ability to repress emotions failing, and the too-slow realisation that “holding it inside only helped to do me in”. This song holds extra meaning because the woman who wrote and sings this song, the incomparable Mia Zapata, was raped and murdered walking home from a friend’s apartment in 1993.
About ten years ago, I was walking to a friend’s birthday party when I realised some creep was following me. I did all the normal things women do: I clutched my car keys in my hand. I sped up but didn’t run lest I trigger him to chase. But I also felt something new: I had a clear flash of rage. I found myself wishing that I had a weapon in my handbag so I could turn around and confront him, turn the tables, make him afraid. That moment was the seed that became this book.
Feels Blind – Bikini Kill
Honestly, the whole playlist could have been 90s Riot Grrrls. I debated “Shitlist” by L7, “Dig Me Out” by Sleater-Kinney, “Bruise Violet” by Babes in Toyland, “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!” by X-Ray Spex, “I Feel Insane” by Daisy Chainsaw.
In the end, it had to be “Feels Blind” by Bikini Kill for the line, “I’m the woman I was always taught to be, hungry…” Femme Feral is very interested in hunger – appetites, starvation, eating disorders, how women are taught to starve ourselves and keep ourselves small. One of my favourite scenes in the novel is where Ellie eats everything in her kitchen, from the leftover condiments to whole peppercorns she crunches in her teeth.
Someone’s Gonna Die Tonight – Gin Wigmore
Of course, sometimes what you’re craving is a little more bloody.
I just love how jaunty this song is, singing about how she’s off to go and bite someone’s head off, because sometimes you just need to just go out and commit an act of unspeakable violence with the girlies, you know?
Army of Me – Björk
Björk is an artist who’s always recognised the animal inside the human. I once flew to Barcelona and stood in the rain for three hours waiting to see her perform and I regret nothing.
This is the quintessential song about being sick of other people’s whinging, about how fascinatingit is when the world’s self-appointed caretakers finally snap. “You’re on your own now, we won’t save you, your rescue squad is too exhausted.”
In a culture obsessed with youth, it’s life-saving to cultivate a roster of older role models, and Björk is absolutely one of mine. On her remarkable podcast Sonic Symbolism she says, “Most of us go through phases in our lives that take roughly three years, and it’s not a coincidence that this is often how long it takes to make an album, a book or a film.” It was true for this one.
9 to 5 – Lady Parts
Speaking of older women inspirations, I adore this punky cover of Dolly Parton’s eternal working-women’s anthem. But please watch the original movie with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, the perfect film about how sometimes you and your girlfriends murdering someone terrible really is the best solution.
This cover comes from the absolute banger We Are Lady Parts, one of my all-time favourite TV shows set in London.
I’m Not Your Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch – Courtney Barnett
A lot of the novel is set in the tech industry, which is where I worked for most of my twenties. The most infuriating and outrageous things that happen to Ellie were all just lifted from my real life, and will be annoyingly familiar to any woman who’s ever been talked over or asked to take minutes in a meeting (everyone?). This song reminds me of a particular moment from my career where I’d made a polite request to an engineer who was my subordinate, and he rolled his eyes at me and said, “Yes Mom”. I stole that moment almost word-for-word for the novel.
I would very much like to go and play him this rant of Courney Barnett’s deliciously deadpan fury.
Get Off the Internet – Le Tigre
The tech industry is obsessed with quick, easy fixes to complex problems; problems that the tech industry itself is at least partly guilty of causing in the first place. Even things that appear to be domestic, health, emotional, personal problems, are often at least partially systemic.
Ellie can’t begin to heal until she finds a pack. The older I get, the more convinced I am that the solutions aren’t about self-help, or more productivity or cleaner eating or self discipline or apps or (only) medications or therapy, but require us to get out into the streets with other people and fight for large-scale political change.
Or, you know, just disembowel all your enemies.
Dog Days are Over – Florence and the Machine
Lastly, a reminder that on the other side of a breakdown, very often, inevitably, there’s joy. When you finally stop clutching what’s not working, you have the chance to try something new.
Sam Beckbessinger teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University, writes kids’ TV and picture books, and once wrote for Marvel. She grew up on a farm near Durban, South Africa, but now lives in London.