The Coiled Serpent

Camilla Grudova lives in Edinburgh. Her fiction has appeared in <i>The White Review</i> and <i>Granta</i>. She is the critically-acclaimed author of <i>The Doll's Alphabet </i>(2017) and <i>Children of Paradise </i>(2022). <b>LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2024</b><br><b>GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023</b><br><b>TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 </b><br><b></b><br>A little girl throws up Gloria-Jean's teeth after an explosion at the custard factory; Pax Alexander and Angelo are hypnotically enthralled by a book that promises them enlightenment if they keep their semen inside their bodies; Victoria is sent to a cursed hotel for ailing girls when her period mysteriously stops. In a damp putrid spa the exploitative drudgery of work sparks revolt; in a Margate museum the new Director curates a venomous garden for public consumption.<br><br>In Grudova's unforgettably surreal style these stories expose the absurdities behind contemporary ideas of<br>work Britishness and art-making to conjure a singular startling strangeness that proves the deft skill of a writer<br>at the top of her game. An arresting discomforting collection from 'one of Britain's best young short story writers' (<i>Daily Telegraph</i>) that revels in the rotten and festers in the imagination. <b>Utterly triumphant</b>... I can't remember the last time I read satire of the Great British institutions so crisply rendered so exquisitely batty... Grudova has an instinct for queasily precise imagery that few can rival... <b>She's a thoroughly sui generis visionary - and after reading <i>The Coiled Serpent </i>I'd say one of the most startlingly original writers we've got.</b> <b>Camilla Grudova's books make other young writers seem meek</b>... It's weird dark and graphic but as her new collection proves it's also funny and poignant and distinctive <b>so inventive that it makes other writing seem uncourageous.</b> <b>A prodigious instinct for story... careering majestically between the astonishing and the terrible to create something uniquely gripping.</b> It's <b>gruesome fare served with cold precision</b>... One imagines these stories pairing perfectly with the painter Paula Rego's paintings of women subverting fairy tales... The simmering undercurrent of rage... is all too recognisable. Grudova's stories are <b>dark creepy and strange</b> each a little off-kilter in a world where mental anxiety and fleshy reality are twisted into surreal scenarios by her fertile but festering imagination... for those with a penchant for gothictinged body horror <b>these are the business.</b> <b>Queen of the grotesque</b>... These stories are not for the faint of heart and reading them is as <b>sharply satisfying</b> as picking at a scab. Strange weird twisted sometimes surreal and always absorbing. Unsettling... refuses to gloss over the grimy reality of years of austerity with <b>Grudova's signature abstract flair</b>. An excellent second collection of exultantly gross-out tales <b>Utterly triumphant</b>... I can't remember the last time I read satire of the Great British institutions so crisply rendered so exquisitely batty... Grudova has an instinct for queasily precise imagery that few can rival... <b>She's a thoroughly sui generis visionary - and after reading <i>The Coiled Serpent </i>I'd say one of the most startlingly original writers we've got.</b> <b>Camilla Grudova's books make other young writers seem meek</b>... It's weird dark and graphic but as her new collection proves it's also funny and poignant and distinctive <b>so inventive that it makes other writing seem uncourageous.</b> <b>A prodigious instinct for story... careering majestically between the astonishing and the terrible to create something uniquely gripping.</b> It's <b>gruesome fare served with cold precision</b>... One imagines these stories pairing perfectly with the painter Paula Rego's paintings of women subverting fairy tales... The simmering undercurrent of rage... is all too recognisable. Grudova's stories are <b>dark creepy and strange</b> each a little off-kilter in a world where mental anxiety and fleshy reality are twisted into surreal scenarios by her fertile but festering imagination... for those with a penchant for gothictinged body horror <b>these are the business.</b> <b>Queen of the grotesque</b>... These stories are not for the faint of heart and reading them is as <b>sharply satisfying</b> as picking at a scab. Strange weird twisted sometimes surreal and always absorbing. Unsettling... refuses to gloss over the grimy reality of years of austerity with <b>Grudova's signature abstract flair</b>. An excellent second collection of exultantly gross-out tales