
Reality is unstable and mysterious, where what we read and what we believe are two different things. That’s the feeling engendered by Cursed Bread, the third novel by Pembrokeshire native Sophie Mackintosh: set in smalltown France in the early 1950s, it uses an actual case of accidental food poisoning via tainted flour to create a fictionalised tale whose atmosphere ranges from the erotic to the dreamlike.
The novel’s narrative is wilfully vague, though reminiscent of gothic themes where the uncanny erupts into a realistic setting, and the obsessive traits of Elodie, its narrator, run throughout. A baker’s wife with limited joy in her life, longing, and grief manifest, as does a supposed friendship with Violet, a newcomer in town. (The switch to using “Dear Violet…” as a mode of address made me feel as if I was reading someone’s inner thoughts, someone’s diary, or a love letter that had been intercepted.) Both Elodie and Violet are difficult personalities, though Cursed Bread’s secondary characters are well fleshed out and puncture the monotony of the central bakery setting.
Plot points arrive in peculiar rhythms, and the – ultimately deadly – madness that grips the town is akin to watching a witch trial unfold. Mackintosh’s descriptive prose is horrifying in its detail, but compelling; there remains a lot of room for interpretation, but the aftermath that this story sets up is well worth the wait.
Cursed Bread, Sophie Mackintosh (Hamish Hamilton)
Price: £16.99/£9.99 Ebook/£14 audiobook. Info: here
words BILLIE INGRAM SOFOKLEOUS
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