Description

‘Tense, chilling’ MARIANA ENRIQUEZ

‘Lays bare intergenerational horror, feminine rage and the taking back of power’ STYLIST

‘Incredible’ FINANCIAL TIMES

The house breathes.

The house contains bodies and secrets.

The house is visited by ghosts, by angels that line the roof like insects, and by saints that burn the bedsheets with their haloes.

Nobody ever leaves.

The house was built by a small-time hustler as a means of controlling his wife, and even after so many years, their daughter and her granddaughter can’t leave.

They may be witches or they may just be angry, but when the mysterious disappearance of a young boy from a local wealthy family draws unwanted press attention, the two isolated women, already subjects of public scorn, combine forces with the spirits that haunt them in pursuit of something that resembles justice.

Layla Martinez’s eerie debut novel Woodworm is class-conscious horror that drags generations of monsters into the sun.

Translated by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott

**Readers love Woodworm**

‘It draws you in and slams the door behind you’
‘A monstrous debut’
‘I want to read this book again and again’
‘Biting and inventive’
‘Shirley Jackson by way of Lina Wolff’
‘Deeply, and wonderfully, unsettling’
‘Evokes horrific imagery with a poetic, gnashing tongue’
‘Extraordinary!’

Publisher Review

This supernatural story of an outcast girl and her grandmother lays bare intergenerational horror, feminine rage and the taking back of power. * Stylist * A house of women and shadows, built from poetry and revenge. Layla Martinez’s tense, chilling novel tells a story of specters, class war, violence and loneliness, as naturally as if the witches had dictated this lucid, terrible nightmare to Martinez themselves. — Mariana Enriquez, author of OUR SHARE OF THE NIGHT It pounces on us from the first line and doesn’t let go until the last, if it lets go. The Gothic revival continues to expand and produce great works. — Edmundo Paz Soldan, author of NORTE Woodworm is a true literary event. — Belen Gopegui, author of Stay This Day and Night with Me This book is the revenge of an intergenerational wound, the embrace of barbarity, the loss of morals when trying to protect your loved ones. This book is the miserable and the wretched saying ‘enough is enough.’ — Alana S. Portero, author of BAD HABIT