What Doesn’t Kill Us

by Ajay Close

A killer stalks the streets of Leeds. Every man is a suspect. Every woman is at risk. But in a house on Cleopatra Street, women are fighting back.

It’s the eve of the 1980s. PC Liz Seeley joins the squad investigating the murders. With a violent boyfriend at home and male chauvinist pigs at work, she is drawn to a feminist collective led by the militant and uncompromising Rowena. There she meets Charmaine – young, Black, artistic, and fighting discrimination on two fronts.

As the list of victims grows and police fail to catch the killer, women across the north are too terrified to go out after dark. To the feminists, the Butcher is a symptom of wider misogyny. Their anger finds an outlet in violence and Liz is torn between loyalty to them and her duty as a police officer. Which way will she jump?

Ajay Close combines the tension of a police procedural with the power and passion of the women’s lib movement. By turns emotional, action-packed and darkly funny, What Doesn’t Kill Us reveals just how much the world has changed since the 1970s – and how much it hasn’t.

Genres: Fiction, Historical, Literary Fiction, Crime, Thriller

392 pages, Paperback

First published February 9, 2024

About the author

Ajay Close is a Scottish-based dramatist and writer of literary fiction. Her novels explore the emotional flashpoints of place, politics and family. Her latest, What Doesn't Kill Us, is a fictional reworking of real events in 1970s Yorkshire.

Reviews

[Rachel Louise Atkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to Saraband for sending me an early copy of this book to review!

What Doesn’t Kill Us is set in Leeds at the end of the 1970s as a killer stalks the streets and targets sex workers and women who he finds walking alone at night. Whilst not a complete retelling, this aspect of the book is partly inspired by the Yorkshire Ripper and it takes on the vibe of this era in history where millions of women in the north of England weren’t able to leave the house at night for serious fear of losing their lives.

It also focuses on a group of radical feminists who are organising marches and campaigns against violence against women. The two are bridged through the character of Liz who is a policewoman but also moves into the commune like house on Cleopatra Street that the feminists occupy.

I loved the beginning and end of this novel but found that the middle went a bit slow for me and so I was happy when it started to pick back up. The parts that showed real tension between the women in the feminist group were really great and felt like the murder investigations could back a back seat to these characters.

The book is ultimately about women and the feminist movement of the 1970s in the north and I’m glad it focused less on the killer and more on the characters and Liz’s experience discovering her sexuality and calling in life when she previously used to be in an abusive relationship and not say anything to her misogynistic coworkers. Her character development was really great.

I’d recommend this if you’re interested in books set in the working class northern communities and are interested in feminist history with a streak of crime thriller running through it.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the past year or so, I've been searching for any fiction at all that deals with the WLM or with British second-wave feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. It seems like such a rich subject for historical novelists, and yet I found nothing that puts the WLM centre-stage (it's mentioned in Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other and Eva Moreda's Home Is Like A Different Time). So yeah, Close gets huge kudos from me just for choosing this topic. And What Doesn't Kill Us is impressively well-researched, bringing to life the revolutionary feminist scene in Leeds in the late 1970s. Close is especially interested in the debates about female separatism and sex with men that have been accused of 'splitting' the WLM after its stormy 1978 conference and ultimately leading to its downfall. She has her central group of characters write and publish a fictional version of the manifesto 'Love Your Enemy?', which argued that feminists should not sleep with men, as well as taking part in a series of arson attacks against sex shops that, in real life, were claimed by the anonymous group Angry Women. From a historical perspective, I thought her take was impeccably nuanced. I especially liked the fact that she unpicks the homophobic narrative that 'political lesbians' caused the WLM to splinter by pointing out that many of the women who were most invested in the 'Love Your Enemy?' version of female separatism were not lesbians, and many lesbians, even political ones, rejected the ideas put forward by the Leeds group. She also pays particular attention to class division within the collective she focuses on, but doesn't reduce this to working-class versus 'bourgeois'; her many working-class characters all have different views on the new direction that feminism is taking, as do the middle-class women.

Does this work as a novel? Yes, but I had some reservations. What Doesn't Kill Us has two major plot threads. One is the emergence of revolutionary feminism in Leeds that I talked about above, and the way the women's tactics change, putting the group in greater danger. The second sees police investigate a fictionalised version of the Yorkshire Ripper; a serial killer is at work in the city, making women afraid to walk after dark. This novel also has two narrators. The bulk of it is narrated by Liz, a white working-class police constable who comes to live at the women's collective after she leaves her abusive boyfriend, but who hides her job from them. However, we also get significant sections from Charmaine, a mixed-race (white/African-Caribbean) woman who is at art college and takes part in the activism of the central group of characters, although she doesn't live with them. There's a lot to say about these narrative choices. Although I think a lot of writers add multiple narrators for the sake of it, it struck me that if there ever was a novel that needed more narrative perspectives, it's this one. The collective is full of fascinating women, and I would have loved to hear from some of them. I was also sorry that so much of the novel is dominated by Liz and the police investigation, when I wanted to hear more from Charmaine and the other women.

I really struggled with Liz as a narrator. In short, I didn't like her. Close makes her feel authentic and distinctive, but I just didn't want to spend so much time in her company. Liz is defeatist, miserable and jaded. She has every right to be so, especially at the start of the novel, but I wish we could have seen more of a change in her as her story develops; some of her beliefs are different by the end, and she's questioning her own sexuality, but she's very much the same person. This wasn't helped, for me, by the heavy use of dialect in Liz's chapters, which occasionally felt a bit try-hard. The prose was difficult to follow at times, not just because of the dialect but because of the limited ways in which Liz thinks. In some ways, this is a triumph - we really get inside Liz's head - but I wanted to get out of it again. Charmaine, on the other hand, is written very differently, even though she also comes from a working-class Leeds background. I loved her chapters and wanted much more of them. It was a shame, also, that the conclusion to the police investigation dominates the end of the novel, whereas the women's stories end rather abruptly I wanted to see the fallout of Liz's betrayal, and at least a little more about Charmaine starting to rebuild her artistic career!

What Doesn't Kill Us is so original and so necessary that I can forgive it a great deal. It's also currently shouldering the burden of being the only novel about these times. It made me think about just how badly we need more fiction about women's liberation.

I received a free proof copy of this novel from the publisher for review.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

At one point I thought this was over the top regarding the sexism of the time, and then an article about Gisele Pelicot popped up, and I realized some things haven't changed enough.

[Ape · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic book, fantastically written and very grim. The subject matter and the era. Well, we're in Leeds in the 1970s when it was not a good time to be female, and the Yorkshire Ripper was on the prowl. This is so closely written to the history, and so well that you could believe it is about the Ripper and his victims. But in fact they are all fictional. This was a time when meat headed macho was an aspiration and women were objects and inferior and ought to be hlad of any attention they got. I shudder to think of it. Times have improved a lot, but we are still not where we need to be and at the moment it feels like globally we're taking some big backward steps.

It follows a female hippy squat in Leeds, along with PC Liz who finally leaves her nasty abusive boyfriend and moves in to the collective. She doesn't tell them she is a police officer for obvious reasons. But then she gets seconded into CID to work on the Yorkshire Butcher case, the women are protesting to take back the night and against male violence to women and then Rowena turns up.

I shudder. There's plenty of horrible characters and she is supposed to be fighting and leading for women's rights. But she feels narcissistic and incredibly manipulative, also narrow minded and incapable of actually listening. There is her world view and you have to fit in. She gets the women protesting and breaking the law, but always with herself cleverly out of the way of harm. And she's so extreme and dictatorial that when she finds out the cat is male, she demands he goes. Eye roll. But the women go along with it, desperate to please. It's a bit more of a problem when it turns out one of the toddlers in the comune is a boy and she wants him tossing out but not all the mothers agree.

The era is rough and the women have rough lives from poverty, abuse, the general way society treats them. So I suppose none of them are going to be nice. Makes it hard to find likeable characters. All the men are vile. Liz and Charmaine are the most sympathetic I found. Poor Charmaine who just wanted to get into art college but didn't stand a chance with that tutor. And what her boyfriend did to her was a very literal depiction of how men treated women.

It's a very good book. I will certainly look out for other books by her.

[Farah G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Misogyny is alive and well on the cusp of the 1980s - in the streets of Leeds where a serial killer stalks, and in the police force, where women are routinely derided or patronized.

PC Liz Sealey knows all about it, because she is on the frontline - on all fronts. Facing domestic abuse at home and derision from some of her college on the the task force investigating the slayings, she finds an unexpected source of camaraderie in the women who gather at a house located in a nearby street.

This is a group of those who are fed up and angry at the injustice they see all around them, most recently exemplified by the reign of terror wrought by the killer's brutal actions. But the problem goes far deeper that, and Liz knows it just as well as the others do. But can she allow herself to be drawn into something that goes directly against her duty as a police officer?

This story has elements all too familiar even in 2024, and is a gut punch to those who like to claim that there is no disparity in the situations of women and men in the UK today. Written in a voice that is both RAW and authentic, Close has given us a book worth reading. It gets 3.5 stars.

I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok . I lived in Leeds in the late 70s and early 80s so know the situation with the Yorkshire ripper well. This book describes that period , the circumstances and women's lives at that time well. There are a lot of characters and it did take me a while to get around who they all are. The book is fairly fast paced at the beginning and towards the end. The middle part is more about the actions of the feminist women's group and the group living together in the house on Cleopatra Street. All of the book describes misogyny and the attitudes to women at work at that time. I would have preferred a shorter middle part and more later in the book to finish off the women's stories.
Not a bad read , though in parts it was hard going, it was too drawn out in places.
Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was interested in this book, it's the second book I've read recently based around these times in the late 1970's, early 1980's. I enjoyed the beginning of the book, meeting Liz, a young police woman who wants to move up into CID. The writing portrays the feelings and views of people at that time, so may not always be politically correct, but it definitely gives an accurate account of how things were then. The book recounts a story similar to the Yorkshire Ripper who sent fear into women all across the country. Whilst it started well, it did, for me, slow up as the storyline moved on and I found my interest wasn't held as much. There is also a lot of regional dialect and this did make it difficult to follow at times. I did however found my interest reignited as the book came to an end, and I liked how the author finished it.

[Sara Selwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good book - it transported me back to the North of England in the late 1970s, where I had lived in the early 1970s and returned to in the early 1980s. Ajay Close’s immaculate research captures the endemic culture of misogyny, chauvinism and the instinctive growth of feminism in response to that. She captures the overwhelming drabness of Northern cities at the time. What was new were her descriptions of individuals' behaviour in the context of different constituencies’ apparently collective responses to a serial killer, not least the dismissive and wholly inadequate attitude of the police. The book is timely – depressingly so, because it implicitly highlights how much still needs to change. It manages all this while simultaneously being a real page turner.

[Karen R-C · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book quickly took me back to the late 70s when Britain was ruled by men stinking of fried food and stale fag smoke , whilst women shrank in the background, too exhausted by life to speak out. Ajay’s description of the time feels real. The characters are so well formed, I can remember people just like them in my own past.
I experienced the book as an audiobook, read by a student Molly Hannon who I hope has a bright future in front of her..she was so good.
I ended the book with the stench of the 70s in my nostrils and its taste in the background of my throat.

Highly recommended as book a page turning thriller and a reminder of a terrifying period of British history.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ajay Close's writing is such that I make sure to buy everything she writes. In this case I did not even read the blurb before diving in and becoming immediately snared. In the 1970s I was birthing and bringing up three children, happily enough married to be scornful of the feminist movement, less so of the Yorkshire murders, (especially given I've Sutcliffes in my family tree) and so I found this a fascinating and multi-stranded alternative view of all that went on then, with a cast of colourful characters living against a background dark with violence.

[Tivoli Wallington · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been waiting to be written for years. It is chillingly authentic and I found it a compelling read. For anyone growing up in West Yorkshire in the 70s it will ring horribly true. The writing is bang on and the casual and overwhelming racism and sexism are portrayed devastatingly. Tour de force and well done, Ajay.

[Mehva · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subject matter was interesting, having lived through this in a different country, It was part historical fiction, part mystery, serial killer. and a look at feminism and misogyny. The style at times was slow and hard for me personally to get into

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Discovered this great writer at the Edinburgh Book festival, great story based on an actual serial killer in the 1980s. Great capturing of the setting, dialogue.

[Lisa]

DNF; I had a very hard time reading this book written in dialect and finally gave up.

[Jane Glaister · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superbly accurate in place and language.

[moldmothgirl]

idk

[Fiona Brichaut · Rating 5 out of 5]

What Doesn't Kill Us is my top read of the year so far (I know it's early days, but still...). To say I was gripped is an understatement.

It's set in the 1970s, in the time and place where the Yorkshire Ripper murders occurred. He is called 'The Butcher' in this telling and the identities of the victims are fictional, but there are many similarities in terms of the police investigation and various events. I cannot write about it without comparing it to another wonderful book with the same setting that I read a few months ago: The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey. Both are stories about the lives of people living in Yorkshire under the menace of a vicious serial killer.

It was fascinating to read about the same era from two such different perspectives. The List of Suspicious Things is from the point of view of a child who does not really understand what is happening in the community. What Doesn't Kill Us is from the perspective of the people all too conscious of what is going on: young women, potential victims.

And not just victims of a serial killer. Victims every day of deeply embedded sexism and misogyny. Victims of racism (also a theme in The List of Suspicious Thing). Victims of abusive husbands and partners. And yes, victims of other women sometimes.

Liz is a young police officer. She's ambitious, but quickly realising that the career prospects for women on the police force are virtually non-existent. It's a man's world, where the only attention she's likely to attract is due to her gender, her body, rather than to her intelligence or skill. However, she does get an opportunity to work as a detective on the case, hunting The Butcher. Her role is largely to get the wife out of the room when she and her superior officer interview potential suspects in their homes [Liz proposes tea and follows the wife to the kitchen]. And nobody pays much attention to her insights.

However, when Liz"s boyfriend beats her up (again), she is taken in by a group of women who share a house. The household and regular visitors include (ex-)prostitutes, feminist activists and various other women seeking refuge from men, and from male violence. It's essentially an all-women commune. As they are all deeply distrustful of the police, Liz hides the fact that she is a police officer, telling them instead that she serves in the police canteen. With a foot in both camps, therefore, Liz's loyalties are torn.

Sexism, misogyny and male violence against women are what this novel is all about. Every page of it made me seethe — with anger, indignation and helpless fury. I remember the '70s. I was in or about Liz's age at that time. I was reading Fay Weldon and Doris Lessing and Germaine Greer et al back then. While most people will tell you that the world has changed a lot since then, some things have not changed at all. There may be better career prospects for women, in general (I know that I speak from a position of privilege), but sexism and misogny are still with us, and men continue to beat the shit out of women on a regular basis. And yes, there is still a hierarchy of victims, with middle class, white, pretty (straight!), 'nice' girls garnering the most sympathy and attention.

The novel also deals with the theme of extremism, raising questions about political activism and to what extent the ends justify the means.

Everyone should read What Doesn't Kill Us. Especially young women. Women who have been fooled into thinking those days are long gone. They're not. It's also highly relevant today in a wider sense, looking beyond gender inequality to social inequality in a society that is today seething and politically destabilised, much like it was in the 70s.

Moving on from the themes to the more technical aspects, What Doesn't Kill Us is an excellent, totally immersive novel. The pacing is balanced, moving smoothly from intense dialogues to action. The characters leap from the page. The writing is very skillful, revealing characters in a few telling words. It's insightful. And it's occasionally very funny.

In short, I loved it.

Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for the ARC. All my reviews are 100% honest and unbiased, regardless of how I acquire the book.

[Mark O'Neill · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing book! When you are reading truly great historical novels, like Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy, you feel like you have been inside the minds of the leading character. When you finish one, like Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong, you feel, not that you have read a fine book, but that you have lived through the times and experienced the lives of the protagonists; they are now part of you. This brilliantly written book combines both qualities. We live alongside the vivid inner lives of Liz, an ambitious young WPC, and Charmaine a young art student of colour as they seek to shape their lives against the grain of sexist institutions in Leeds during the time of the Yorkshire Ripper.
Like the protagonists of Close’s earlier novels, Liz is fully embodied; we don’t just listen in on her stream of consciousness, we experience her physical sensations of being in pubs and at crime scenes, of being intruded upon by self-regarding sexist policemen and of discovering an intimacy that is more than sex. We experience her relief at the support she finds from a women’s liberation collective and her growing confidence as she explores her working class as well as her gender identity. We feel the energy and excitement of the fierce debates about how best to respond to the whole spectrum of male domination, from casual catcalls to sadistic murder. All of this is carried along by a thrilling narrative, written with a sparkling intelligence and a sharp wit. The reading by Molly Hannan is compelling, distinguishing the individual characters so that it is easy to follow. She captures the range of Leeds accents brilliantly, and revels in Liz’s deadpan humour. Highly recommended.