Cursed Bread (longlisted For The Women’s Prize)

By (author) Mackintosh, Sophie
Description

GRANTA BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 2023

From the Booker Prize-nominated author of The Water Cure comes a chilling new feminist fable based on the true story of an unsolved mystery...

A recommended read for 2023 in The Times, Guardian, Irish Times, Scotsman, iD, Good Housekeeping, Big Issue and Our Culture

''A shimmering fever-dream of a novel'' Telegraph

''A dreamy sapphic romp'' The Times

''Gauzy [and] gripping, a quietly rich maturation of Mackintosh''s skill'' Guardian

If you eat the bread, you''ll die, he said. The statement made no sense, but it filled me with an electric dread.

Elodie is the baker''s wife. A plain, unremarkable woman, ignored by her husband and underestimated by her neighbours, she burns with the secret desire to be extraordinary. One day a charismatic new couple appear in town - the ambassador and his sharp-toothed wife, Violet - and Elodie quickly falls under their spell. All summer long she stalks them through the shining streets: inviting herself into their home, eavesdropping on their coded conversations, longing to be part of their world.

Meanwhile, beneath the tranquil surface of daily life, strange things are happening. Six horses are found dead in a sun-drenched field, laid out neatly on the ground like an offering. Widows see their lost husbands walking up the moonlit river, coming back to claim them. A teenage boy throws himself into the bonfire at the midsummer feast. A dark intoxication is spreading through the town, and when Elodie finally understands her role in it, it will be too late to stop.

Audacious and mesmerising, Cursed Bread is a fevered confession, an entry into memory''s hall of mirrors, a fable of obsession and transformation. Sophie Mackintosh spins a darkly gleaming tale of a town gripped by hysteria, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes.

Review quote
A shimmering fever-dream of a novel, teasing the reader [..] while finding a fresh narrative framework for the relationship between monotonous small-town life and repressed female desire. Cursed Bread contains more riches than many a novel twice its length
Review quote
A quietly rich maturation of Mackintosh''s skill... This is a book about the power desire and greed exert over reality and memory... Mackintosh has entered a brilliant new stage of writing
Review quote
Nimble, terrifying... Mackintosh is a wonderful prose stylist and she uses many of the resources that served her well in her Booker prize-nominated debut, The Water Cure: the slow unravelling of sanity, the isolated and mysterious setting, that feeling of panting, crawling, unfulfilled desire... A dreamy sapphic romp
Review quote
Remarkable, sensuous, thrillingly written . . . Mackintosh''s evocation of desire is so tangible that you can smell the aroma of illicit sex
Review quote
A richly atmospheric tale of greed, desire and vainglorious ambition, the plot centres around Elodie, wife of the village baker, who projects the wants and desires from her own unfulfilling marriage onto the arrival of two glamorous newcomers to the village... Shimmering with an almost hallucinatory quality throughout, closing its pages at The End feels like waking up from a fever dream. Fascinating.
Review quote
A sun-scorched fever dream . . . Mackintosh''s top-notch phrasemaking and knack for forming uncanny images generate a baleful atmosphere of lust and dread in this splendidly peculiar tale
Review quote
Sensual, luminous, transcendent... This tale of obsession, desire and betrayal