Cursed Bread

<b>Sophie Mackintosh</b> is the author of three novels: <i>The Water Cure</i> <i>Blue Ticket </i>and <i>Cursed Bread. </i>Her debut novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 and won a Betty Trask Award 2019. <i>Cursed Bread </i>was longlisted for the Women's Prize 2023. She has been published in <i>Granta The White Review</i><i> </i>and <i>TANK </i>magazine<i> </i>among others. <b>A shimmering fever-dream of a novel</b> teasing the reader [..] while finding a fresh narrative framework for the relationship between monotonous small-town life and repressed female desire. <b><i>Cursed Bread</i> contains more riches than many a novel twice its length</b> <b>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</b> <b>Nimble terrifying... Mackintosh is a wonderful prose stylist </b>and she uses many of the resources that served her well in her Booker prize-nominated debut <i>The Water Cure</i>: the slow unravelling of sanity the isolated and mysterious setting that feeling of panting crawling unfulfilled desire... <b>A dreamy sapphic romp</b> <b>Remarkable</b> <b>sensuous thrillingly written</b> . . . Mackintosh's evocation of desire is so tangible that you can smell the aroma of illicit sex <b>A richly atmospheric tale of greed desire and vainglorious ambition</b> 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... <b>Shimmering with an almost hallucinatory quality throughout closing its pages at The End feels like waking up from a fever dream. Fascinating.</b> <b>A sun-scorched fever dream </b>. . . Mackintosh's top-notch phrasemaking and knack for forming uncanny images generate <b>a baleful atmosphere of lust and dread in this splendidly peculiar tale</b> <b>Sensual luminous transcendent... </b>This tale of obsession desire and betrayal has a timeless dreamlike quality.<b> It confirms Mackintosh as one of our finest young writers </b> As in her previous novels <b>Mackintosh's prose is eerie but minimalist - dreamlike yet grounded</b>. Her style elevates plot to the status of fable or allegory without resorting to straightforward metaphor. <b>This a story shrouded in mist thick with meaning</b> <b>This novel is a masterclass in observation</b> of fracturing personalities but also in its tight and nuanced portrait of the rituals and minutiae of small-town life. Afterwards <b>you'll want to devour it all over again</b> <b>Mackintosh's dark imagination and precision as a prose stylist combine to devastating effect as unsettling as it is unpredictable</b> <b>Sensual brilliant... </b>This strange fable takes place in a 20th-century French village (and remarkably is based on a true story). <b>It</b> is the sort of tale that you will want to sneak a chapter of at the dinner table before food is served. The book details the progress of a maddening hot summer... Be warned: you will never look at a boulangerie in the same way again <b>A thrilling and subversive fable</b> <b>Distinctive cool sparse... An eerie ambiguity fills <i>Cursed Bread</i></b> <b>Intoxicating sumptuous and savage</b> <i>Cursed Bread</i> has a gothic sensibility that is entirely original. In Mackintosh's hands the strange compulsive machinations of desire become luminous and ghastly all at once <b>Sensuous and haunted like Madame Bovary reworked as a ghost story</b> - an incredible book about desire pleasure beauty. Sophie's fiction always has a gauzy quality filled with strange languid images which rise to a narrative crescendo like clues in a detective novel. <b>She makes it look effortless</b> <b><i>Cursed Bread</i> floored me on the first page</b> and didn't let up for the rest of the journey. It always feels like a true privilege to spend time with Sophie Mackintosh's brilliant mind and she is only getting better and weirder and wilder. <b>A knockout</b> <b>Macabre and sensuous... [It] packs a punch</b> <b>Her writing is so sleek the characters mysterious and yet indelible - a taut seductive thrilling gem of a novel</b> <b>Sophie Mackintosh takes a true story and asks what any of us really know about what is true? </b>Our desires poison us. Shame and longing intertwine. We hide even from ourselves... This novel is <b>subtle and devouring; reading it is like being slowly swallowed by the night</b> <b>Vivid and shocking written with stunning incantatory prose</b> <i>Cursed Bread</i> is the kind of book that upends your nervous system Bloody sexy sinister strange. <b>This book will take hold of you</b> Everything Sophie Mackintosh is so febrile and tactile <b>when you read her books you feel as if you live in them.</b> The world felt so eerie after finishing <i>Cursed Bread.</i> I didn't feel quite the same as I was before but in the best way <b>Pristine visceral & wild. She's a master. You won't be disappointed</b> <b>Gorgeously atmospheric and feverishly compulsive</b> [on] amorphous longings and desires and the hot shame of wanting more than you deserve Sophie Mackintosh has given her strange and intriguing imagination the opportunity to flourish. There is tension on every page <b>A thrilling and feverish fable of secret desire</b> <p><b><i>GRANTA</i> BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS</b><br><br><b>From the Booker Prize-nominated author of <i>The Water Cure</i> comes a chilling new feminist fable based on the true story of an unsolved mystery . . .<br><br>'A shimmering fever-dream of a novel' <i>Telegraph</i></b><br><br><b>'A dreamy sapphic romp</b><b>' <i>The Times</i></b><br><br><b>'Gauzy [and] gripping a quietly rich maturation of Mackintosh's skill<i>' Guardian</i></b><br><br>Audacious and mesmerising <i>Cursed Bread</i> is a darkly erotic tale of a town gripped by madness envy like poison in the blood and desire that burns and consumes.<br><br>Elodie is the baker's wife: plain unremarkable and unappreciated she is desperate to escape her dull small-town life. One day a charismatic new couple appear in the neighbourhood 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 conversations longing to possess them.<br><br>Meanwhile beneath the tranquil surface of daily life strange things are happening. The animals expire in the fields for no reason. Ghosts are sighted after dark. A dark intoxication is spreading through the town and when Elodie finally understands her role in it it will be too late to stop.</p> <p><b><i>GRANTA</i> BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS</b><br><br><b>From the Booker Prize-nominated author of <i>The Water Cure</i> comes a chilling new feminist fable based on the true story of an unsolved mystery . . .<br><br>'A shimmering fever-dream of a novel' <i>Telegraph</i></b><br><br><b>'A dreamy sapphic romp</b><b>' <i>The Times</i></b><br><br><b>'Gauzy [and] gripping a quietly rich maturation of Mackintosh's skill<i>' Guardian</i></b><br><br>Audacious and mesmerising <i>Cursed Bread</i> is a darkly erotic tale of a town gripped by madness envy like poison in the blood and desire that burns and consumes.<br><br>Elodie is the baker's wife: plain unremarkable and unappreciated she is desperate to escape her dull small-town life. One day a charismatic new couple appear in the neighbourhood 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 conversations longing to possess them.<br><br>Meanwhile beneath the tranquil surface of daily life strange things are happening. The animals expire in the fields for no reason. Ghosts are sighted after dark. A dark intoxication is spreading through the town and when Elodie finally understands her role in it it will be too late to stop.</p>