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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

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.

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

The Spectator Book of the Year 2023

Publisher Review

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 * Telegraph * 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 * Guardian * Nimble, terrifying... Mackintosh is a wonderful prose stylist and she uses many of the resources that served her well in her Booker prizenominated 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 * The Times * Sensual, luminous, transcendent... This tale of obsession, desire and betrayal has a timeless, dreamlike quality. It confirms Mackintosh as one of our finest young writers * The Bookseller, Editor's Choice * A thrilling and subversive fable * i-D * Intoxicating, sumptuous and savage, Cursed Bread 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 -- Alexandra Kleeman, author of 'You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine' Sensuous and haunted, like Madame Bovary reworked as a ghost story - 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. She makes it look effortless -- Jo Hamya, author of 'Three Rooms' Cursed Bread floored me on the first page 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. A knockout -- Megan Nolan, author of 'Acts of Desperation' Her writing is so sleek, the characters mysterious and yet indelible - a taut, seductive, thrilling gem of a novel -- Olivia Sudjic, author of 'Asylum Road' Sophie Mackintosh takes a true story and asks what any of us really know about what is true? Our desires poison us. Shame and longing intertwine. We hide even from ourselves... This novel is subtle and devouring; reading it is like being slowly swallowed by the night -- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of 'Starling Days' Vivid and shocking, written with stunning, incantatory prose, Cursed Bread is the kind of book that upends your nervous system -- Julia May Jonas , author of Vladimir Bloody, sexy, sinister, strange. This book will take hold of you -- Saba Sams, author of 'Send Nudes' Everything Sophie Mackintosh is so febrile and tactile, when you read her books you feel as if you live in them. The world felt so eerie after finishing Cursed Bread. I didn't feel quite the same as I was before, but in the best way -- Annie Lord, author of 'Notes on Heartbreak' Pristine, visceral & wild. She's a master. You won't be disappointed -- Sarah Rose Etter, author of 'The Book of X' Cursed Bread is a gorgeously atmospheric and feverishly compulsive novel about amorphous longings and desires, and the hot shame of wanting more than you deserve -- Lara Williams, author of 'Supper Club' PRAISE FOR BLUE TICKET: 'Its cool intensity and strange beauty is a wonder - be sure to read everything Sophie Mackintosh writes' -- Deborah Levy, author of 'Hot Milk' and 'The Man Who Saw Everything'