THE BOOK THAT MADE ME: SHAUN HUTSON'S SLUGS BY KATHRYN FOXFIELD

In retrospect, Slugs wasn’t the greatest gateway book for a child. It’s not even a great book. There’s no clever writing here, or a believable plot, or characters you actually care about. But Hutson writes about gushing bodily fluids with such glee that I couldn’t stop reading.

THE BOOK THAT MADE ME: SHAUN HUTSON'S SLUGS
​BY KATHRYN FOXFIELD

My transition from children’s books to adult was a furtive, creeping process.


My mother would sometimes drop me off at the local library and tell me to pick out a few books while she went off to do the weekly shop. It was on one of these unsupervised visits that I first slipped away from the comfortable sofas and the brightly-coloured carpet of the kids’ area into the acres of shelves that housed all the books for grownups.


I checked over my shoulder to see if the librarian was going to stop me. I tentatively—guiltily—ran my fingers over the spines of the plastic-wrapped books. I removed a book and flicked through the pages, too buzzed to actually take in the words.


Footsteps!


I quickly put the book back and returned to where I was supposed to be. But the pull was too great. I kept returning. Until, one week, I found the courage to sneak a book into my stack to take home with me.


My heart thumped in my chest. My top lip beaded with seat. Surely there some rule about a ten-year-old taking Shaun Hutson’s Slugs out of the library and reading it, wide-eyed, in snatched moments when no one was watching?


But, no. No one stopped me. This was the eighties, after all.


Before I continue, did you know that a slug has more teeth than a shark (about 27,000 in fact)? And one female slug can lay one-point-five million eggs a year? Slugs are pretty damn gross before Shaun Hutson got his hands on them and made them much, much worse.


Back to my story. The book was horrifying. Basic premise? Carnivorous slugs with a taste for human flesh. That’s it.


The first victim is devoured almost completely, leaving behind just sinew and bone, plus one lone eyeball bulging from its socket. Another unfortunate accidentally eats half a slug and parasitic worms burst out of his eyes while he’s dining at a restaurant. Later, a teenage couple get it on in one of their parents’ bed and are summarily gobbled up alive. Don’t have sex, kids.


In retrospect, Slugs wasn’t the greatest gateway book for a child. It’s not even a great book. There’s no clever writing here, or a believable plot, or characters you actually care about. But Hutson writes about gushing bodily fluids with such glee that I couldn’t stop reading.


I even returned to the library and took out the sequel, Breeding Ground. These books fuelled my ‘Creature Horror’ phase of reading. I was forever trying to replicate the level of shock and revulsion triggered by Slugs, but nothing was ever as good/bad, although James Herbert’s The Rats came close.


I went on to work my way through the small horror/fantasy/science fiction section of the library. But I gradually become more and more disillusioned with all these books that rarely spoke to me on a level any deeper than, ‘Oh my god, not his eyeballs!’


Today, I’m a YA writer with a leaning towards horror. My characters are predominantly teenage girls and when anyone asks me why, I tell them I’m writing for the teenage version of myself who never saw herself in the books she read.


Although, remembering Slugs, maybe that was a good thing.

It's Behind You 
by Kathryn Foxfield 

The bestselling author of Good Girls Die First is back with an entertaining, high-octane and read-in-a-single-sitting new thriller.Welcome to the reality game show that'll scare you to death! Have you got what it takes to last the night?

Five contestants must sit tight through the night in dark and dangerous Umber Gorge caves, haunted by a ghost called the Puckered Maiden. But is it the malevolent spirit they should fear... or each other?
As the production crew ramps up the frights, secrets start to be revealed... these teenagers have hidden motives for taking part in It's Behind You! and could some of them be... murder?
​

• It's Most Haunted meets I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here for fans of Holly Jackson and Karen McManus.

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Kathryn Foxfield​

Kathryn Foxfield writes dark books about strange things. She blames her love of the creepy and weird on a childhood diet of Point Horror, Agatha Christie and Dr Who. She writes about characters who aren't afraid to fight back, but wouldn't last 5 minutes in one of her own stories. Her first book GOOD GIRLS DIE FIRST was published by Scholastic UK in 2020.

Kathryn is a reformed microbiologist, one-time popular science author, cat-servant and parent of two. She lives in rural Oxfordshire but her heart belongs to London. You can follow her on Twitter @iloveweirdbooks or visit her website kfoxfield.com

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