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Pink Soap
Joint Winner of The Weatherglass Novella Prize, with Ali Smith.
"A classic for now as Plath’s The Bell Jar has been for the decades behind us.
This funny and terrifying novella is a study of what and how things mean, and don't, in our latest machine age. In it something unforgiveable has happened. The main character, seemingly numbed but bristling with blade-sharp understanding, is only just holding things together and trying to work out how to heal. So she travels to Japan in a search for the other half of a fragmented family. Or is it the world itself that has fragmented?
Pink Soap examines the massive everyday pressures we’re all under with real wit and style. It is pristine, brilliant, smart beyond belief."
"A classic for now as Plath’s The Bell Jar has been for the decades behind us.
This funny and terrifying novella is a study of what and how things mean, and don't, in our latest machine age. In it something unforgiveable has happened. The main character, seemingly numbed but bristling with blade-sharp understanding, is only just holding things together and trying to work out how to heal. So she travels to Japan in a search for the other half of a fragmented family. Or is it the world itself that has fragmented?
Pink Soap examines the massive everyday pressures we’re all under with real wit and style. It is pristine, brilliant, smart beyond belief."
110 pages, Paperback
Published June 10, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 15, 2026
As I get off the bus, I remember my pink colouring pencil is getting short, so I make a detour to the art supply shop to procure replacements. I find my way to the relevant aisle and select five identical pink pencils. The shopkeeper wraps them lengthways in the receipt and puts them in a small brown paper bag. He asks me what I intend to use them for. I tell him that I have been intermittently sketching the same bar of soap for the past four weeks or so. I explain that the rate at which the soap shrinks is dependent on the number of showers I take. "How many showers do you think it will take for it to disappear?" he asks. I tell him it will largely depend on the weather and the balance of chemicals in my brain.
Pink Soap by Anju Gaston was the joint winner of the Weatherglass Novella Prize as chosen by Ali Smith, whose citation is below.
The novel is narrated by a woman called Anju, in the second year of a PhD where her thesis had been on the relationship between the internet and madness, specifically the experiences of mania and psychosis online.
However, recently she suffered from a manic episode with psychotic features, sending threatening emails to various of her acquaintances as well as a famous philosopher. Of those who received them, the CEO of her former firm 'was the only recipient to reply to me with anything resembling kindness on concern', but she was eventually sectioned.
The novel begins shortly after she has been discharged and is rebuilding her life and renewing her acquaintance. Although she is scared of apologising to those impacted, worried that they will not, and indeed should not, forgive her:
When I meet with the psychiatrist for the seventh or eighth time in my life, the internet connection is unstable. He begins to ask me how my mood is, before being cut off. I tell him that, for the most part, I feel both ashamed and embarrassed. I repeat this several times until the connection stabilises. Although it takes him a few attempts to get this across coherently, he tells me that a patient with a broken leg would never apologise for having a cast. I am unconvinced by the analogy. I want to ask him whether someone with a broken leg should be forgiven for attacking someone with their crutches.
One of her coping mechanisms is to sketch a bar of pink soap which she uses - see the opening quote - making thirty-seven such sketches over the course of the novel and sending them to friends and acquaintances, particularly those who visited her in hospital or sent get-well cards.
Anju is also biracial, born in Hiroshima to a Japanese father and British mother, who later became estranged from the family and as a child she moved to the UK with her mother aged around 7, not seeing her father for another 14 years thereafter, a component of her fractured identity.
I might never have realised I was biracial; the strangeness of my name is sometimes the only thing that reminds me I am not, in fact, white. An unusual name invites predictable questions. As a child, when people asked where my name was from, I would tell them I was half Japanese and draw an imaginary vertical line down the middle of my face with my index finger. Aside from these moments, I did not think about race at all during my childhood.
There were over a thousand pupils in my secondary school. As a teenager, when the girls in my class asked me why I had such dark hair, I told them it was because I was half Japanese. Stop lying, they said. You don't look Japanese at all. Prove it, they said. When my classmates told me I did not look Japanese, I felt joy.
And in the novel's second section she travels to Japan to visit her father, who doesn't speak English, a friend of his providing interpretation and also acting as a bridge in their relationship.
The narration is in short, often single-sentence, paragraphs, reflecting the narrator's attempt to piece together her life and to overcome her feelings of shame: I tell myself I cannot live my life in fear of having another episode, yet that is how I feel. [...] I feel that the latest episode wrung all the language out of my mouth [...] I feel like I will never be able to look anyone in the eye ever again.
This is a powerful piece - novella length is perfect for the intensity - and another impressive book from Weatherglass Press.
Booktube review by Bob the Bookerer
Ali Smith's citation
“I ask the internet the difference between something being too close to the bone and something being too close to home.” This funny and terrifying book is a study of what and how things mean, and don't, in our latest machine age. In it something unforgiveable has happened.
The main character, seemingly numbed but bristling with blade-sharp understanding, is only just holding things together and trying to work out how to heal. So she travels to Japan in a search for the other half of a fragmented family. Or is it the world itself that has fragmented?
Pink Soap examines the massive everyday pressures we’re all underwith real wit and style. It is pristine, brilliant, smart beyond belief. I sense it becoming as much a classic for now as Plath’s The Bell Jar has been for the decades behind us.
Pink Soap by Anju Gaston was the joint winner of the Weatherglass Novella Prize as chosen by Ali Smith, whose citation is below.
The novel is narrated by a woman called Anju, in the second year of a PhD where her thesis had been on the relationship between the internet and madness, specifically the experiences of mania and psychosis online.
However, recently she suffered from a manic episode with psychotic features, sending threatening emails to various of her acquaintances as well as a famous philosopher. Of those who received them, the CEO of her former firm 'was the only recipient to reply to me with anything resembling kindness on concern', but she was eventually sectioned.
The novel begins shortly after she has been discharged and is rebuilding her life and renewing her acquaintance. Although she is scared of apologising to those impacted, worried that they will not, and indeed should not, forgive her:
When I meet with the psychiatrist for the seventh or eighth time in my life, the internet connection is unstable. He begins to ask me how my mood is, before being cut off. I tell him that, for the most part, I feel both ashamed and embarrassed. I repeat this several times until the connection stabilises. Although it takes him a few attempts to get this across coherently, he tells me that a patient with a broken leg would never apologise for having a cast. I am unconvinced by the analogy. I want to ask him whether someone with a broken leg should be forgiven for attacking someone with their crutches.
One of her coping mechanisms is to sketch a bar of pink soap which she uses - see the opening quote - making thirty-seven such sketches over the course of the novel and sending them to friends and acquaintances, particularly those who visited her in hospital or sent get-well cards.
Anju is also biracial, born in Hiroshima to a Japanese father and British mother, who later became estranged from the family and as a child she moved to the UK with her mother aged around 7, not seeing her father for another 14 years thereafter, a component of her fractured identity.
I might never have realised I was biracial; the strangeness of my name is sometimes the only thing that reminds me I am not, in fact, white. An unusual name invites predictable questions. As a child, when people asked where my name was from, I would tell them I was half Japanese and draw an imaginary vertical line down the middle of my face with my index finger. Aside from these moments, I did not think about race at all during my childhood.
There were over a thousand pupils in my secondary school. As a teenager, when the girls in my class asked me why I had such dark hair, I told them it was because I was half Japanese. Stop lying, they said. You don't look Japanese at all. Prove it, they said. When my classmates told me I did not look Japanese, I felt joy.
And in the novel's second section she travels to Japan to visit her father, who doesn't speak English, a friend of his providing interpretation and also acting as a bridge in their relationship.
The narration is in short, often single-sentence, paragraphs, reflecting the narrator's attempt to piece together her life and to overcome her feelings of shame: I tell myself I cannot live my life in fear of having another episode, yet that is how I feel. [...] I feel that the latest episode wrung all the language out of my mouth [...] I feel like I will never be able to look anyone in the eye ever again.
This is a powerful piece - novella length is perfect for the intensity - and another impressive book from Weatherglass Press.
Booktube review by Bob the Bookerer
Ali Smith's citation
“I ask the internet the difference between something being too close to the bone and something being too close to home.” This funny and terrifying book is a study of what and how things mean, and don't, in our latest machine age. In it something unforgiveable has happened.
The main character, seemingly numbed but bristling with blade-sharp understanding, is only just holding things together and trying to work out how to heal. So she travels to Japan in a search for the other half of a fragmented family. Or is it the world itself that has fragmented?
Pink Soap examines the massive everyday pressures we’re all underwith real wit and style. It is pristine, brilliant, smart beyond belief. I sense it becoming as much a classic for now as Plath’s The Bell Jar has been for the decades behind us.
July 1, 2026
Incredibly dark yet witty. I found myself conflicted, feeling guilty for laughing out loud at all the satirical gems. I loved the exploration of the everyday, for me it was very reminiscent of Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. It’s a real skill to grip and entertain someone in the telling of what could be the most mundane experiences. A very accurate and hard hitting (yet funny and elegant) portrayal of life inside the mind of someone with a mood disorder. I enjoyed the sense of isolation and the exploration of connection. Amazing book. Can’t wait for the next one!
July 30, 2026
A novella with the gravity of Plath and Patchett
Pink Soap by Anju Gaston
Joint winner of the Weatherglass Novella Prize, Pink Soap is narrated by Anju, a PhD student researching the relationship between the internet and madness. After a manic episode with psychotic features, during which she sent threatening emails to acquaintances and even a philosopher, she is sectioned (detained under mental health law) and later discharged, left to rebuild her life and face those she alienated.
One of her coping mechanisms is to sketch a bar of pink soap, thirty‑seven times over the course of the novella, sending the drawings to friends and acquaintances who had visited her in hospital or sent get‑well cards. The obsessive details—estimating how many showers the soap will survive, buying more pink pencils to continue the ritual—are both absurd and profound, giving the book its strange weight. After her release, she travels to Japan to visit her estranged father, but she cannot speak his language. A friend steps in to interpret, becoming the bridge that allows them to reconnect, underscoring the fragility of identity and belonging.
This novella belongs alongside Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Ann Patchett’s Truth & Beauty, her memoir of friendship with Lucy Grealy. Like those works, Gaston’s book confronts breakdown and mental health with blade‑sharp clarity, but here the brevity intensifies the effect. I valued it enough to order a hard copy from Weatherglass after finishing and returning the library copy. Kudos to them for publishing a work that feels destined to endure.
Pink Soap by Anju Gaston
Joint winner of the Weatherglass Novella Prize, Pink Soap is narrated by Anju, a PhD student researching the relationship between the internet and madness. After a manic episode with psychotic features, during which she sent threatening emails to acquaintances and even a philosopher, she is sectioned (detained under mental health law) and later discharged, left to rebuild her life and face those she alienated.
One of her coping mechanisms is to sketch a bar of pink soap, thirty‑seven times over the course of the novella, sending the drawings to friends and acquaintances who had visited her in hospital or sent get‑well cards. The obsessive details—estimating how many showers the soap will survive, buying more pink pencils to continue the ritual—are both absurd and profound, giving the book its strange weight. After her release, she travels to Japan to visit her estranged father, but she cannot speak his language. A friend steps in to interpret, becoming the bridge that allows them to reconnect, underscoring the fragility of identity and belonging.
This novella belongs alongside Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Ann Patchett’s Truth & Beauty, her memoir of friendship with Lucy Grealy. Like those works, Gaston’s book confronts breakdown and mental health with blade‑sharp clarity, but here the brevity intensifies the effect. I valued it enough to order a hard copy from Weatherglass after finishing and returning the library copy. Kudos to them for publishing a work that feels destined to endure.
June 30, 2026
I can’t say that I understood the book but I couldn’t put it down
July 20, 2026
“The neighbour asks whether I have had a good year. I think about the number of people who would most likely never speak to me again. I think about being sectioned and forcibly medicated for forty-two days. ‘So-so,’ I say.”
I recently discovered Weatherglass Novellas after reading that Ali Smith had judged these two books the joint winners of the 2026 Weatherglass Novella Prize. As I’m a huge Ali Smith fan, I immediately bought them both.
In Pink Soap, our narrator has recently been hospitalised following a manic episode and is trying to rebuild her life. A PhD student in London, she is researching the relationship between the internet and madness.
The novella begins in the aftermath of her hospitalisation, as she attempts to move forward after sending numerous threatening emails during her manic period. In many ways, the story reads like a diary, allowing us inside her mind through short, sharp, darkly funny observations.
The narrator is biracial, of Japanese and British ethnicity, and partway through the story she travels to Japan to meet her father, whom she has only met a handful of times. This journey adds another layer to the novel’s exploration of identity and attempting to put her life together.
Despite its light and often humorous tone, the novella has a lot to say about mental illness, and the pressure to appear “normal” in both the workplace and wider society. The story also explores how little we can truly know about other people’s lives, reminding us that so much suffering remains invisible.
“…Key things I learned was that, in the wake of a car crash, you should always be most concerned about the person who is silent and likely in shock. The person who screams and cries is probably fine. And I feel that when it comes to suffering, those who have experienced real hardship tend not to be vocal about it, you know?’
I enjoyed this novella! If you liked Jente Posthuma’s What I’d Rather Not Think About, I think you’ll enjoy Pink Soap too. It’s a brilliant debut: intelligent, funny, and quietly devastating. Beneath its dark humour lies an exploration of identity, mental health, and the stories we tell ourselves to keep going.
I recently discovered Weatherglass Novellas after reading that Ali Smith had judged these two books the joint winners of the 2026 Weatherglass Novella Prize. As I’m a huge Ali Smith fan, I immediately bought them both.
In Pink Soap, our narrator has recently been hospitalised following a manic episode and is trying to rebuild her life. A PhD student in London, she is researching the relationship between the internet and madness.
The novella begins in the aftermath of her hospitalisation, as she attempts to move forward after sending numerous threatening emails during her manic period. In many ways, the story reads like a diary, allowing us inside her mind through short, sharp, darkly funny observations.
The narrator is biracial, of Japanese and British ethnicity, and partway through the story she travels to Japan to meet her father, whom she has only met a handful of times. This journey adds another layer to the novel’s exploration of identity and attempting to put her life together.
Despite its light and often humorous tone, the novella has a lot to say about mental illness, and the pressure to appear “normal” in both the workplace and wider society. The story also explores how little we can truly know about other people’s lives, reminding us that so much suffering remains invisible.
“…Key things I learned was that, in the wake of a car crash, you should always be most concerned about the person who is silent and likely in shock. The person who screams and cries is probably fine. And I feel that when it comes to suffering, those who have experienced real hardship tend not to be vocal about it, you know?’
I enjoyed this novella! If you liked Jente Posthuma’s What I’d Rather Not Think About, I think you’ll enjoy Pink Soap too. It’s a brilliant debut: intelligent, funny, and quietly devastating. Beneath its dark humour lies an exploration of identity, mental health, and the stories we tell ourselves to keep going.
August 6, 2026
So mundane but filled to the brim with an ever-present emptiness, incompleteness. I loved it. The character seems to overanalyse everything and think so deeply in ways that the people around just don’t. I love how they interpret the world, even if it’s bleak.
Also, so nice to read an AMAZING novel from a fellow Devonian!!!
Also, so nice to read an AMAZING novel from a fellow Devonian!!!
August 8, 2026
Me hice la interesante comprando este libro y, oye, bastante bien.
No hay una trama muy elaborada; son más bien sus pensamientos intrusivos, pero me vi reflejado en ellos.
Ella hace reflexiones que me han gustado mucho y se sentía como leer un artículo de Substack en el mejor de los sentidos.
Buena lectura de playa, fácil de leer y entretenido si te gustan este tipo de libros.
No hay una trama muy elaborada; son más bien sus pensamientos intrusivos, pero me vi reflejado en ellos.
Ella hace reflexiones que me han gustado mucho y se sentía como leer un artículo de Substack en el mejor de los sentidos.
Buena lectura de playa, fácil de leer y entretenido si te gustan este tipo de libros.
July 13, 2026
I really loved this as Anju has managed to put the reader in the headspace of someone going through a manic episode, or having ADHD. It’s entertaining and makes you feel seen, and yet this is not a self help book (thank god). Incredibly vulnerable at points too.
July 22, 2026
I can see the Sylvia Plath comparison but sadly this type of writing (short, straightforward sentences) rarely makes me feel anything. But I do enjoy this kind of story where the characters are more important than any kind of plot development!
July 5, 2026
Very stylish writing including some very memorable images (most prominently: the pink soap). A tough read though because purposefully very flat
July 28, 2026
Sadly, didn’t enjoy this one as much as I’d hoped to
July 30, 2026
Despite me being a big fan of novel about mental health and language as an impediment for relationships, this book didn't capture me and it didn't leave any big impression on me.
July 21, 2026
This book slightly drew parallels to Sociopath for me. I didn’t know anything about mania before reading this and you get a bit of insight into someone’s thoughts as they’re going through these episodes. The majority of the book is written using short, clipped sentences which makes you feel as if you’re reading a shopping list almost, and creates a strong sense of detachment.
I also particularly liked the theme of language too and the narrator’s love-hate relationship with not knowing much Japanese (the mother tongue of her father) and how that creates difficulties when communicating, if they do at all. She touches a bit on not feeling connected to him because of this language barrier. On the flip side, even though she speaks the same language as her mum, they’d rather not speak to each other at all.
I also particularly liked the theme of language too and the narrator’s love-hate relationship with not knowing much Japanese (the mother tongue of her father) and how that creates difficulties when communicating, if they do at all. She touches a bit on not feeling connected to him because of this language barrier. On the flip side, even though she speaks the same language as her mum, they’d rather not speak to each other at all.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews